Tories would end projects like NHS 'supercomputer'

Tags: A Best practice Cameron Government HIS iS Labour London Open Source

03 Apr 2008

Conservative party leader, David Cameron promised today that if his party was elected there would be no more IT projects “like Labour’s hubristic NHS supercomputer”.

Addressing the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts in London yesterday, Cameron attacked the Labour Party’s commitment to large scale, centralised systems.

“The basic reason for the problems [in government IT programmes] is Labour's addiction to the mainframe model -large, centralised systems for the management of information.

“From the NHS computer to the new Child Support Agency, they rely on 'closed' IT systems that reduce competitive pressures and lead to higher risks and higher costs,” he said.

If his party was elected, he said, it would take a different approach to government IT projects such as the National Programme for IT.

“We will follow private sector best practice which is to introduce 'open standards' that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components. So never again could there be projects like Labour's hubristic NHS supercomputer.”

“And we will create a level playing field for open source software in IT procurement and open up the procurement system to small and innovative companies,” he added.

He referred to open-source specialists Linux, as an example of how ‘information liberation’ could be beneficial in the new economy.

“We're going to move from a top-down system to a bottom-up one. Where money follows the needs and wishes of individuals and the users of services - not the priorities of the bureaucracy.

“Where we don't ask, where does the voluntary sector fit in? - but rather: where doesn't the voluntary sector fit in? Where we in government concentrate on the results that public services deliver, not prescribe the processes they have to follow,” he said.

The speech was wide-ranging speech including discussion on innovation and Conservative party policies to set public data free.

Concluding, he said: “I passionately believe that if we are to take on and beat the great challenges of our time, we need the culture of public policy-making to have innovation at its heart. That's the way to get the best results. And that's the way to get value for taxpayers' money.”

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Readers Comments

Don't you just Politicians?

03 Apr 08 17:56

Don't you just Politicians? It always seems to be the ones in Opposition that have the answers to our problems. Perhaps we should just change the Government more often...........

Soundly-based spin

04 Apr 08 08:17

Whilst I wouldn't defend David Cameron against political spin here, I am sympathetic to his underlying sentiments. IMHO, NPfIT in its present configuration needed terminating at the end of the design stage (or even before). At this stage - and despite Gordon Hextall's recent eulogy to CfH's progress - the end simply can't come soon enough.

Roll on the next election!

Just to clarify

04 Apr 08 09:54

I just wanted to clarify something in this article which is slightly misleading. It talks of Linux as if it were a company. Linux is (depending on its context), an operating system (a rival system to Microsoft Windows) or (more broadly), an ideology. It isn't a company exactly. It does, however, follow the open-source doctrine that software should be freely available to the public, and that software developers (including those developing software as a hobby) should be free to examine and modify the source code of a program in order to improve it. It also advocates peer review of code for the same reason. Somehow I'm not quite sure that peer review of code will be too welcome in the presesnt climate.

Further info

04 Apr 08 09:55

As an addition to my previous post, Wikipedia has a good article on Linux at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux .

Soundly-based Delivery

04 Apr 08 12:08

Terminate at the end of the design stage......we've delivered, mate.

IT neither the problem nor solution with NHS

04 Apr 08 12:08

As at least one NPfIT management consultancy learned to their cost, the NHS is not comparable to a clearing bank or supermarket chain.

The NHS is a constellation of semi- or wholly autonomous public and private service fiefdoms with separate budgets and different priorities. Fragmentation only increases under current policy.

Each fiefdom ingests a flow of directives which are often poorly consistent either with those issued earlier or those received by other parts of the NHS.

Thus any centrally directed program for NHS IT sets out with a fearsome handicap.

The caprice with which the DoH deals out policy involving major changes in workflow or reporting practice means administrative systems remain in a state of perpetual revolution.

Meanwhile clinical requirements for IT are complex but remarkably stable and consistent across organizational and even national boundaries. However implementing clinical applications always runs poor second to the bean count or service reconfiguration du jour. Worse, existing clinical functionality may be undermined by the shifting sand of central mandate.

IMHO if the NHS were not the plaything of politicians (of whatever ilk) fixated on the next headline, floating voter focus group and opinion poll then progress with information technology supporting healthcare workers and enhancing patient safety would ensue almost incidentally.

Dr Malcolm H Duncan

Re: Soundly-based delivery

04 Apr 08 12:56

Oh come on now! Sorry to challenge your assumptions (? delusions) but - set against the context of pre-NPfIT NHS progress with IT - what benefits has NPfIT delivered and how do they square up against the costs?

Open source healthcare information system

05 Apr 08 11:42

Anyone out there with an interest in open source healthcare information systems might be interested to visit www.PatientOS.org. This free standards based fully integrated system is being developed to dramatically cut the cost and complexity of healthcare IT. May 2008 will see the release of the primary care module and November 2008 will see the release of the secondary care module. Anyone is welcome to download/help develop/use the system for clinical use, research or just as a hobby.

Just another sound-bite from a politician .....

06 Apr 08 11:38

Cameron is forgetting the most important factor :-

- The contracts have been signed.

Therefore the suppliers will have to be bought out.

Re: Just another sound bite ...

07 Apr 08 09:43

That there are contracts in place is unfortunate .... but it would be tragic if this was allowed to prevent NHS IT moving forwards in a more appropriate direction.

In the early, heady days of NPfIT much was made of the risk management provisions within these contracts. Was delivering a white elephant ever recognised as a risk, I wonder?

Ignorance is bliss

07 Apr 08 09:55

I see Mr Cameron is wearing his ignorance on his sleave one again. Judging by his reported comments I can only conclude that neither he nor his advisors have much of a clue about NPfIT or the way that the private sector commissions and manages large scale IT projects. I mean, it might suit his rhetorical purposes to characterise NPfiT as involving some kind of monolithic supercomputer, but that's not even close to the truth. Does anyone take this stuff seriously?

Spinny spin spin

les_fawcett@hotmail.com

07 Apr 08 10:07

Mr Cameron seems to have forgotten that it was his parties open market policies for NHS IT Systems in the mid 90's that led to the disjointed state of information sharing we have today.

Indeed, why don't we return NHS IT system development to the halcyon days as the cottage industry it once was under the conservative government.

Then again, anyone who was around then and remembers such suppliers as LK Global will shudder at the thought...

false dichotomy

09 Apr 08 08:51

Les sets up an entirely false set of extremes: either NPfIT or an unmanaged marketplace (that was set in place in the 80s not the 90s). I hesitate to use the devalued phrase 'middle way', but it is entirely possible to envisage sensible management of the marketplace, much along the lines of the old RFA process in GP-land.

As a lifelong labour voter, i may have to reconsider my position...