Reply to: Friday's Channel 4 news - NHS IT systems

[hyperD]

And guess who else amongst New Lie has or had its nose in this Andersen trough ...



Ed Balls. Another nasty, slimy deceitful piece of work of the same ilk as Milliband. Makes my skin crawl every time this poisonous creep opens its lieing, slathering mouth.

Yes, belly-crawling piece of lying filth. One of brown's henchman who has now moved to being an MP, obviously in readiness for brown's ascension to captain of a sinking ship.

[The Lone Gunman]

poisonous

poisoneress perhaps? no no I am just being silly

[Fleetwood]

poisonous

[BobTheCrate]

And guess who else amongst New Lie has or had its nose in this Andersen trough ...



Ed Balls. Another nasty, slimy deceitful piece of work of the same ilk as Milliband. Makes my skin crawl every time this poisonous creep opens its lieing, slathering mouth.

[Joe Black]

A not untypical experience of the public sector:

Decide to develop 20-30 eGov projects in Java. Recruit loads of consultants. Send permies off on training to help out etc.

Six months later scrap everything and decide Microsoft is the way forward. Cue more training for permies and loads of new consultants.

Nine months later scrap everything again and decide Java/BEA is the way forward. Cue more training for permies and loads of new consultants.

One year later not a single project in production and the EU about to breath down said dept's neck because the UK won't be in compliance with other EU systems, what shall you do?...yep, bring all those MS consultants back and start working on the old code again...

[Clog II The Avenger]

Thanks TinTin. I'd forgotten about those things. I believe that problems with the projects are having interesting effects in the Stock Market:

NHS deal worries halve iSoft shares

It would seem that plenty of money is being spent:
The nine projects at the heart of NHS IT (Silicon.com)

The 11 companies that run 80 per cent of government IT

I was working on a project with one of the above on a government contract to upgrade the network infrastructure hardware and OS. Part of the contract with the government department was to replace the desktop PCs and an upgrade them in two years time. The government department was not specific with any details so the consultancy took away the PCs, then took out the CD RWs and replaced them with CD ROMs. The PCs were then swapped with various ones in other departments. The upgrade after two years was to have the CD RWs fitted. Needless to say the government department was not happy but they couldn’t do anything out it because the contract was not specific on what was meant by “replacing PCs” and “upgrading PCs”

[Fleetwood]

WTF's wrong with Yahoo,Hotmail or Gmail?

[BoredBloke]

"So, rather than install an off the shelf solution, they wrote a new email system from scratch."

Was that their crappy Route 400 email which a number of public sector organisations had? Before working at the doh in '96, I had never seen this product. I only ever saw it when I had the miosfortune to return to public sector work.

It truly was a bag of crap and massively easy to hack. I know somebody who hacked it and we got the low down on who was shagging who in the building.

[Board Game Geek]

ISoft

A number of surgeries that I look after use Isoft software, Synergy being the main application. As a whole, it works.

But....the real problem these surgeries have is when something goes wrong.

Case in point. Isoft released a patch to their application, which knocked out random network printers used in the surgery. Including the one in dispensary.

Guess how long it took for Isoft to finally put it right, as they have dial in access ?

2 hours ? 4 hours ? A day ?
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12 FEKKING DAYS

So, for 12 days, the dispensary couldn't print scripts. They had to make do with running to another office in a different part of the building to print scripts.

I was livid with ISoft Tech support. For a start, you are NEVER given a TTF. It just goes in to their "queue". The people who take the reference all sound like bored and pooly paid 18 year olds on their 1st job.

When I reported the fault on Day 1, I stressed that it was high priority. At the end of the call, I asked what priority it had been assigned. "Standard", came the reply. I hit the roof...if you cannot issue scripts, you may as well close the doors to a busy practice. The 18-year old techie agreed that it was "pretty important then". I explain that it will need an ISoft Engineer to attend site.

Day 2.....still no fix....calls are made to the ISoft team..."We're working on it"...

Day 3....more of the same
Day 4....get a call from someone.."Hello...you reported a fault. What appears to be the problem ? ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH ! Go through the whole explanation again, in painstaking detail.
Day 5....nothing
Day 6....The Surgery make an official complaint to the PCT
Day 7....The PCT breathe down my neck. Want to know what the hell is going on. I explain. The PCT make contact directly with ISoft.
Day 8....PCT call me and say "we're severely annoyed. We got the brush off. We cannot seem to leverage the company we pay to manage our surgeries clinical systems"
Day 9....nothing
Day 10...nothing. A call reveals that they are "working on it"
Day 11...Hooray ! They call the practice to explain that they have looked at the problem. They confirm that an Engineer needs to attend site ! (I said that right from the start !)
Day 12...Engineer turns up. Takes a whole day to reconfigure printing for 4-5 network printers.

At the end, the Practice and the PCT wrote very strong letters of complaint to Isoft. To date, 4-5 weeks later, there has been no reply.

This is just a normal example of the issues we face with Isoft. All Practice Managers meet every week or so in an area, so word spreads quickly.

Suffice to say, all sites in our area have leapt at the chance to ditch Isoft, and are now acticely migrating. I can only imagine what impact this is going to have on 20% of their business and future share price. I think, so far, you've only seem some minor bloodletting. ISoft haven't even met the guillotine yet.









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[TheMonkey]

That's eGov for you.

They haven't realised that consultants are there to make money, not provide solutions. The NHS should have their own permanent team and IT division rather than contracting it out.

[stan2484]

I'm working on an NHS project now, for a big company but not one of the above. Our project seems to be going quite well at the moment, though a bit hectic.

Incidently, in February HMG suddenly and unexpectedly pulled the plug on a company in Surrey and moved the business to iSoft. The Surrey company were developing a good product too, so iSoft must be good. Unfortunately, the Surrey company went under as a result.

Believe me the iSoft product is a pile of sh*te, I have worked on both the primary and secondary care systems and they are a complete bag, not helped by some of the infrastructure designed by the LSP's mind.

More than likely the switch was decided on the golf course's 19th hole and iSoft were picking up the tab (cheque will probably bounce mind!)!!

[wendigo100]

I'm working on an NHS project now, for a big company but not one of the above. Our project seems to be going quite well at the moment, though a bit hectic.

Incidently, in February HMG suddenly and unexpectedly pulled the plug on a company in Surrey and moved the business to iSoft. The Surrey company were developing a good product too, so iSoft must be good. Unfortunately, the Surrey company went under as a result.

[mcquiggd]

Yep, Ive worked for two of that list, and alongside others...

On one occasion I worked on a project for the NHS. They made it an over complicated mess... there were simple approaches that were the obvious choice, then there was the Atos Origin approach that meant stupid amounts of unneccessary work.


As I remember some silly sod went and said 'everyone in the NHS needs email'.

So, rather than install an off the shelf solution, they wrote a new email system from scratch.

Barking mad.

[TinTin]

Read and Weep !

I've worked with (ie as a contractor) for 2 of them and alongside another 3-4 of the above cowboys. Their profit margins are mostly 200-300% and that's on the gross agency rate ! For that they should be producing all-singing, all-dancing IT systems, not old stuff reheated (methodologies) and recycled (software) served as nouvelle cuisine. A lot of implementations should be straight forward tried and tested solutions, instead they try and build something from scratch and that takes more time and money. Interestingly enough, most gov't contracts work on the same basis as ours, ie charging daily rates, not as a fixed amount with penalties for delays, so there is no incentive to finish on time and within budget. On one of the contracts, they wouldn't even let us take time off for holidays even when we had nothing to do, as they would not be able to charge maximum bums on seats !. Only way to stomach this is looking at it as a way of 'tax redistribution' whenever us contractors are engaged in gov't projects.

[datestamp]

Thanks TinTin. I'd forgotten about those things. I believe that problems with the projects are having interesting effects in the Stock Market:

NHS deal worries halve iSoft shares

It would seem that plenty of money is being spent:
The nine projects at the heart of NHS IT (Silicon.com)

The 11 companies that run 80 per cent of government IT

According to the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) those 11 companies are:
Accenture,
Atos Origin,
BT,
Capgemini ,
Capita,
CSC ,
EDS,
Fujitsu Services,
IBM,
LogicaCMG
Siemens .