Memorandum submitted by Brian Randell
I am writing to you on behalf of the group of
23 senior acedmics in computing and systems who have over recent
months been expressing their urgent concerns about the National
Programme for Information Technology in the NHS (NPfIT).
We have assembled a document[33]
that brings together a substantial corpus of information
and opinion about the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). We are
sending copies of this document to a wide range of people: among
the recipients are about one hundred Parliamentarians of both
Houses, who have spoken on NPfIT issues in recent debates, who
are Members of the Health Select Committee or of relevant parliamentary
groups, or who have other clear interests in the NHS.
Our view is that the NPfIT is showing symptoms
that lead to proper concern over its prospects of success. The
symptoms match those seen in a number of previous public-sector
IT system projects that culminated in large negative returns on
the investment of public funds and on occasion to complete project
abandonment. In our opinion an urgent, thorough and open review
of NPfIT objectives, technical architecture and implementation
is essential if the NHS is to be provided with IT systems that
will support cost-effective healthcare in the coming decades.
Securing such a review is the objective that motivates the work
that we have done.
Last April, following our open letter to the
Health Select Committee calling for such a review, we were invited
by Richard Granger to meet him and his senior team. The meeting
resulted in agreement that such a review could be helpful to the
NPfIT, and an invitation to us to propose terms of reference to
be discussed at a follow-up meeting. We sent draft terms of reference
to Dr Granger in May. We have not subsequently heard from him.
In October, we sent a second open letter to
the Select Committee, in which we said: "As a review will
take several months to organise, conduct and report, we believe
that there is a compelling case for your Committee to conduct
an immediate inquiry: to establish the scale of the risks facing
NPfIT; to initiate the technical review; and to identify appropriate
shorter-term measures to protect the programme's objectives".
We are pleased that the Committee has stated recently that it
will indeed undertake an inquiry, and trust that this document
will prove helpful to their planned inquiry, as well as to the
detailed technical review which we hope will ensure.
Brian Randell DSc CEng
FBCS
Emeritus Professor of Computing Science
19 January 2007
33 Available online at http://nhs-it.info/ Back
| 
