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[Varche]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14378346

Will we get our money back?

Will anyone be sacked?

How come Britain can't make something like this work? (They have it in other countries like Spain for example)

Another scandal of our time that will go "unnoticed" like the MOD spending and so on.

[wakeyomega]

One of the biggest issues here are the customer(s). They are totally unable to come up with a common agreed set of requirements. In each trust, large user requirement committes are formed with in-house medical consultants and surgeons, and they are 'very precious' types, each with their own idea on how things should be, and each wanting their ideas to win over others. multiply this hundreds of times across each trust, and what ensues is an impossible myriad of conflicting requirements. It has been a total nightmare for large IT companies, one of which breathed a large sigh of relief when it was 'encouraged' to withdraw (Fujitsu). I can't belive that every trust / facility needs to have their own flavour of IT system, and its a classic case where 80% fit rule should have been mandated on all. Sometimes a dictatorship actually helps move things forward.

[Kevin Wood]

One of the biggest issues here are the customer(s). They are totally unable to come up with a common agreed set of requirements. In each trust, large user requirement committes are formed with in-house medical consultants and surgeons, and they are 'very precious' types, each with their own idea on how things should be, and each wanting their ideas to win over others. multiply this hundreds of times across each trust, and what ensues is an impossible myriad of conflicting requirements. It has been a total nightmare for large IT companies, one of which breathed a large sigh of relief when it was 'encouraged' to withdraw (Fujitsu). I can't belive that every trust / facility needs to have their own flavour of IT system, and its a classic case where 80% fit rule should have been mandated on all. Sometimes a dictatorship actually helps move things forward.

Yep. Exactly the same problem with all public sector procurement. They are simply inherently incapable of managing a project that's going to work.

[cleggy]

Who was contracted to do the work? EDS/HP Enterprise Systems or some other bunch of FM providers.
Either way they should be made to pay back any money paid for the work, but knowing government contracts I doubt it

[Marks DTM Calib]

Being a project manager myself here, I see two fundamental route causes that have caused this:

1) Poorly up front definition of needs and supporting specs etc

2) Very poor change control

I dont doubt for a minute that a lot of the above is due to the huge disjointed National Health (note I wont use the word service as that was lost years ago) setup we have with multiple 'islands' all around teh country all of which work independently.

[Bionic]

Go on Mark.... Everyone normal and their dog knew it would not work! Considering that it was the general opinion of everyone that was used to give their input before it was made a reality was that it would not work why did it go ahead in the first place? Once again the public servants have had their way and wasted the billions it has already cost. Then consider that in all of the public service offices everywhere they are they have public servants' desks 'piloted or polished' by public servants that either cannot, or will not communicate with each other and therein lies the problem. There again....they are only copying what the different departments in the government do Cynical....you bet

[albitz]

I opted out (in writing) from having my details being on the database, shortly after it was announced.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Inded, I knew it would not work because it would never get to the stage where all the various parties could agree what it should do (its only a database at the end of the day).

What will happened is that it will have been railroaded forward before an agreement on what it should do was sorted.....the result, as is most often the case on any project, is failure, over spend, poor quality, over time or all of the above.

Now, none of that is a project management failure as its only the executives that can aprove a project to proceed and they should have either killed it or put it on hold.

Trouble is, killing a high profile project does not look good on a CV and neither does working on a project that failed.