On 31-May-06 John Whittington wrote:
> At 09:29 31/05/06 +0100, Ted Harding wrote (in small part):
> 
>>In the news -- the lumbering new NHS IT system is projected
>>to cost £20bn in the end.....
> 
> I never cease to be amazed by the 'telephone number' costs
> that we are always seeing in relation to government-related
> IT systems. Do we ever get to see breakdowns of these figures?
> 
> On the face of it, there should not be anything particularly
> exceptional about such a system other than perhaps the extent
> of its deployment (and even that probably less than that
> associated with the Lottery etc!).  Although the scale is very
> large, there is just one central bit of kit (hardware and software)
> to be developed, and probably only one (or a very small number of)
> hardware/ software systems to be developed for users.
> 
> With a fair amount of generosity and 'pessimism', my mental
> estimation processes could just about understand a cost of
> 'a few hundred million' - but 20 billion? !!!!
> 
> I guess I'm naive!
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> John

Visualise, John! Imagine some CEO/MD somewhere, eyes glowing
like bright lamps before a swarm of moths with million-pound
notes for wings.

I like your Lottery analogy -- that's a nationwide IT scheme
with possibly more terminals per square mile than there are
GPs, and it just has to work.

However, this analogy -- and perhaps you comment about "one
central bit of kit (hardware and software) to be developed,
and probably only one (or a very small number of hardware/
software systems to be developed for users" (though I do
sympathise with it) -- may be over-simplistic for a system
like the projected NHS one.

See the URL quoted by Alison:
  http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/
and in particular under "Regional Clusters", where I read:

  "Applications delivered at a local level are the
   responsibility of five Local Service Providers
   (LSPs). The LSPs work closely with local NHS IT
   professionals and are overseen by a Regional
   Implementation Director from the National Programme.

   The LSPs will ensure that existing local systems
   are compliant with national standards and that data
   are able to flow between local and national systems.
   To do this, the National Programme will deliver
   upgrades or replacements to hardware and software
   as appropriate and implement core local training
   for NHS staff."

which carries an ominous suggestion of local "mavericks"
trying to do their own thing, with infighting and committee
meetings at local, regional and national levels (whenever
I see the words "work closely with", they bring such scenes
to mind), much expenditure to implement the different
variants of the systems, etc. In short, the raw material
for a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

Best wishes,
Ted.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 31-May-06                                       Time: 13:42:21
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

******************************************************
Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your
message will go only to the sender of this message.
If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's
'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically
to [log in to unmask]
Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk.
*******************************************************