How to screw up a software project...

Nobody does it quite like the brits ... this is what happens when back-handers and nepotism decide who gets the contract, rather than a merito/techno-cratic decision.

The Article wrote:

In 2002, the English government embarked on a $12 billion effort to transform its health-care system with information technology. But the country's oversight agency now puts that figure at $24 billion, and two Members of Parliament say the project is "sleepwalking toward disaster."

It'd be funny if it wasn't my tax money being wasted - but not quite as funny as the IT Director involved (Richard Granger) failing his IT exams and yet still earning £280,000 a year (that's over $500,000) - no wonder it costs so much.

This issue is a complex one. I spent 3 years consulting in the healthcare industry until finally getting out of it!

The problem is the problem. Each insurance carrier wants to do things their own way. They want to ensure that filing is complicated so that adjudication systems will deny insurance claims or have to be re-filed. Anyone who has worked in the industry know how much of an evil system adjudications are.

Insurance companies will fight and fight and so far have been winning the battles. Small doctors’ offices can't afford new computers or outrageously priced practice management systems (PMSes).

I saw the nightmare that HIPAA created and I don't see how the government is ever going to get this fixed. There are standards, mostly based on Medicare, but there is huge resistance to use them because profits are hurt in moving to them.

I once asked why doctors don't fight the insurance companies and was told that they are too busy fighting for patient rights and they believe that there is no way to beat the insurance company lobbyists in congress.

Thank god I am not working in that industry anymore.

FDB

FluffyDevilBunny wrote:



Each insurance carrier wants to do things their own way. They want to ensure that filing is complicated so that adjudication systems will deny insurance claims or have to be re-filed. Anyone who has worked in the industry know how much of an evil system adjudications are.

It is a little different though, as we do not have insurance for health (typically), and the NHS is free (at the point of need - apparently).  Thus this is one nationwide organisation.  UK Government has a history of costing itself millions and billions of pounds in screwed up projects, but still doesn't learn and still giving the contracts to the people who screwed up last time.

Rossj wrote:

It is a little different though, as we do not have insurance for health (typically), and the NHS is free (at the point of need - apparently).  Thus this is one nationwide organisation.  UK Government has a history of costing itself millions and billions of pounds in screwed up projects, but still doesn't learn and still giving the contracts to the people who screwed up last time.

Aaaahh ... the sweet history of all governments in the world ...

I haven't travelled in a London taxi for a number of years, but when I did, I learned that the only people who knew how to manage football teams, fight wars, run major global companies, organise high profile IT projects etc were London taxi drivers!

Is C9 populated by ex London taxi drivers?

The taxi drivers did get one thing right however - and that was that technology was not the problem nor was it the solution. Have you ever tried to explain agile methods of software development (no - not being evangelical about then - just explaining what they are)? [The taxi driver has some difficulty with the idea that two people sharing the steering wheel actually is the best way to get to the destination!]

It's the customer, stupid! If you had suggested 4 years ago that the NHS was not going to invest in IT as (one of) the way(s) to improve customer care and improve efficiency, you would have had every programmer (sorry, Software Engineer) screaming at his mates on a Friday night in the pub that the Government was missing a huge opportunity.

The reality is a little more difficult - the successes of IT in the health service in the UK are pretty obvious to anyone who cares to look at the situation today and compares it with a few years ago. My records now appear on the PC on the desk in my doctor's surgery, but I know that if I had an accident on the motorway that they would not be available to the surgeon treating me 200 miles away. Is that worse than the situation 20 years ago? No - and I know that two telephone calls and a breach of the UK Data Protection Act and the surgeon would have the information he needed in a few hours today.

The major transformation needed in the UK health service is not IT - it's about changing the the underlying philosophy that the supplier (not necessarily the doctor) is always right, to the idea the the patient is entitled to expect better services and choice, but still within the fundamental principle, accepted by all the political parties in the UK, that healthcare is free at the point of use. IT is only an enabler and and other factors (all to do with people) are more important.

Everybody knows how to run the health service. It's only brain surgeons and software developers who are excluded from the top management team - oh - and London taxi drivers.

Would you care to disclose who you work for? You appear to be very defensive of the mess that has been made of the NHS project. Just in the interests of full disclosure of course.

hayrob wrote:

I haven't travelled in a London taxi for a number of years, but when I did, I learned that the only people who knew how to manage football teams, fight wars, run major global companies, organise high profile IT projects etc were London taxi drivers!

Is C9 populated by ex London taxi drivers?

No, but the IT world in general is.  How else can you explain so many people being experts on so many things?

Of course, I never claimed I could do better - just that I was annoyed that another Government project was screwed up.

hayrob wrote:


It's the customer, stupid! If you had suggested 4 years ago that the NHS was not going to invest in IT as (one of) the way(s) to improve customer care and improve efficiency, you would have had every programmer (sorry, Software Engineer) screaming at his mates on a Friday night in the pub that the Government was missing a huge opportunity.

Yeah blame the customers. Easy target, and they can't answer back. Good answer. Unfortunately, customers can be difficult the world over, and yet other countries manage to deliver on their IT projects.  Why is it the UK that fails project after project after project?

hayrob wrote:


The major transformation needed in the UK health service is not IT - it's about changing the the underlying philosophy that the supplier (not necessarily the doctor) is always right, to the idea the the patient is entitled to expect better services and choice, but still within the fundamental principle, accepted by all the political parties in the UK, that healthcare is free at the point of use. IT is only an enabler and and other factors (all to do with people) are more important.

Of course the healthcare is more important than the technology, and that being the case you don't feel a little miffed that over 20 billion has been wasted on a 'tool'?

hayrob wrote:

Everybody knows how to run the health service. It's only brain surgeons and software developers who are excluded from the top management team - oh - and London taxi drivers.

Instead you have a geologist who barely managed a 2ii degree - given his apparent ability to learn, would *you* have put granger in charge?  He is an IT Director, shouldn't he know *something* about IT?

Yet another reason why the national ID card scheme is a bad idea. If they cant get the NHS system right, can you imagine how many billions that will end up over-running by?

I'm retired! So I have no axe to grind. I am a user of the health service. But I did write software in 1971, and I've been teaching myself to program again. I now consider myself an expert in MS technogies (even if nobody else does!)
I was however - in my working days -  a customer of major software projects so that is why I am happy to reflect the views of customers and their unrealistic expectations. I was also responsible for delivering major IT projects, so again I am able to understand the difficulty of managing the expectations of the non technical customer.
That's the background.
In responding to your first post I wanted to make two points, but it is clear that I have to spell out the first in words of one syllable (or two). The project is not a dog! The taxi drivers think it is, some computer experts think it is (and they of course have delivered as many major IT projects as the taxi drivers), and sections of the media think it is. Some people on C9 think it is but I wonder if they have first hand knowledge of it.
 The second point is that the issues to be addressed in the Health Service are to do with people - not IT.

 

hayrob wrote:

it is clear that I have to spell out the first in words of one syllable (or two).

Don't be cheeky - you're getting all personal now, and there's no need - besides, what is a syllable? If you feel that I am not getting your point, rest assured I am - but I don't believe you are seeing mine. My criticism is not of the NHS, I *rely* on it, but of the 'old boys club' giving out billions of pounds worth of tax payers money on project after project with no apparent responsibility when things do go wrong.  My brother is due to graduate as an RMN (mental health nurse) in a few months - and there are no jobs but there most definitely is the need - how far would that $24 BILLION have gone in addressing the recent job cuts?

hayrob wrote:


The project is not a dog! The taxi drivers think it is, some computer experts think it is (and they of course have delivered as many major IT projects as the taxi drivers), and sections of the media think it is. Some people on C9 think it is but I wonder if they have first hand knowledge of it.

So, the people on the project, the people at the top leading the project, that have gone well over budget - all consider it a successful project?  Hardly likely to criticise it are they? I may be young (ish) and naive, but it is fairly obvious to me that if a project is given a budget of billions of pounds then their aim is to deliver to that budget - when you go *that* far over budget and companies start pulling out of the project with $400 million losses - something has gone wrong.

hayrob wrote:

The second point is that the issues to be addressed in the Health Service are to do with people - not IT.

This is widely known, but we're not talking about how broken the NHS is, we're talking about how a 'tool' to improve *some* aspects of the service have run vastly over budget - again.

blowdart wrote:



hayrob wrote: Some people on C9 think it is but I wonder if they have first hand knowledge of it.

Oh some of us do. And certainly parts of it are a royal balls up and money pit.

I have no first hand knowledge of those areas but you won't get me disagreeing with you!
However are you also saying that none of it has been a success? I would disagree with that.
My first hand experience of the problems with both the reform of the NHS and the IT project includes seeing how doctors have been slow to get involved. Some of that can be blamed on the IT project's inability to engage with the doctors, but it is much more to do with their inate conservatism. For example, the changes in "out of hours" working for GPs has (very correctly) transformed their quality of life. But they embraced it without, for example, saying how can we make better use of technolgy, including some of the things emerging from the IT project, to make out of hours cover work better. It has been left largely to the Health Service managers, rather than the doctors to sort that out - and that does not sound right to me.

So is anything positive coming out of the IT project?

blowdart wrote:



hayrob wrote: Some people on C9 think it is but I wonder if they have first hand knowledge of it.

Oh some of us do. And certainly parts of it are a royal balls up and money pit.

Yup. I couldn't wait to get off that project.

Never seen so many arrogant public school accented "managers" from a certain company- invariably in their mid 20's to 30's on ridiculous salaries for seemingly doing nothing other than "delegating".

Then there was the technical design. A "common format" database that looked like different tables had been designed by different five year olds who had yet to learn the basics of database design, each with different ideas about what constituted sensible naming, formats for date fields or whatever.

Then there was the (complete lack of) data privacy.

Complete and utter waste of taxpayer's money but I'm sure there are plenty of fat cats as a result.