Remember this post regarding the trainwreck that is the NHS National Programme for IT? In it, we discussed the institutional factors that made it a trainwreck, and specifically the way demands for commercial secrecy made it impossible to involve the users in designing the system. Well, now there’s a discussion at Kevin Drum’s about how…
Read More HOWTO Build a Healthcare Computing SystemRemember this post on how the NHS National Programme for IT was doomed? Chatter is circulating that the whole thing might be scrapped, or at least subjected to a major review. Against this background, the big chief, Richard Granger, is leaving and has said some surprising things. E-Health Insider reports; and it’s somewhat disturbing. Apparently,…
Read More NPfIT: Still a disaster. Still a disaster in the same wayI knew roughly what Resource Accounting and Budgeting was all about, but I never imagined they could invent a system that would require NHS trusts to pay back any overspend twice. Especially as, at the same time, the introduction of payment-by-results means that their income scales directly with their output. So, they can’t reduce the…
Read More Paying the cost to be the boss (of the civil service)Ziff-Davis Baseline carries a huge report on exactly why the NHS National Programme for IT is a disaster. (Thanks, Charles.) First of all, a reiteration of a past point: they mention as one of the few successes the N3 tranche of the project, which turns out to be the deployment of DSL lines to GP…
Read More HOWNOTTO build a computer systemD2’s post on statis (it’s the new change) and crap government IT brought something to mind. Dan mentions the success of the Bank of England-run Crest settlement system for the London Stock Exchange, contrasted with the hellbroth of disaster the NHS National Programme for IT is descending into. One thing I think he should have…
Read More Why BT’s bit of the NHS IT contract worksThe Grauniad yesterday interviewed David Nicholson, who’s just been appointed chief executive of the NHS. The text is illuminating in the extreme, especially in terms of managerialism and technocracy. David Nicholson, the new chief executive of the NHS in England, took up the reins of office last week and set about dispelling the notion that…
Read More A case study in managerialismI was amused to see in this weekend’s Indy that a British financial advisor has got himself into trouble by selling his clients securities issued by a US firm specialising in death futures, properly called viatical investments. His situation doesn’t look good, as he seems to have told his clients that 20 per cent of…
Read More Killed By Death