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from the so-much-for-project-management dept.
A UK government report (board minutes from the Health & Social Care Information Centre) says that the National Health Service has £5 billion worth of Information Technology projects at high risk of failure:
The ratings are based on gateway reports assessing the risk of four IT projects this year. All are related as "red" or "amber/red" meaning successful delivery is either impossible or extremely unlikely. Those projects include the remaining electronic health records contracts with BT and CSC, due to end in 2015 and 2016.
According to the HSCIC report, the £2.3bn CSC Local Service Provider (LSP) programme has now been flagged as "red", up from "amber/red" when the Major Projects Authority last released its rating for September 2014. Both programmes were originally started in 2003/2004 and have had an extremely troubled history.
Other high-rated projects on the list included the £168m NHSmail2 programme, to provide secure email across the NHS, which has slipped from "amber" to "amber/red".
NHSmail2 is an upgrade to the NHS's Microsoft Exchange based email system. Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and BT Health London have managed IT services for different divisions of England (CSC manages the North, Midlands & Eastern cluster, BT manages the London cluster).
Previously: UK National Health Service Dumps Oracle For FOSS NoSQL
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 09 2015, @03:59PM
With all that said, the NHS gets better results than the US health care hodgepodge, and at much lower cost. If you think it's bad in the UK, just check out what's going on on the other side of the pond.
Also, without the context of the total number of software projects on the table, the £5 billion number may or may not be all that significant. If, for example, there's £5 billion worth of failure, and £15 billion worth of success, then that's actually a pretty good track record, and the fact that they're keeping close tabs on that £5 billion is a good sign. If, on the other hand, there's £5 billion worth of failure and £1 billion worth of success, then there's a serious problem.
You seem to be working under the impression that corruption is the exception rather than the norm.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.