England’s National Programme for IT: a personal view
Robin Guenier shares his evaluation of the Department of
Health’s approach to involving key participants in what is considered to be
the world’s largest and most complex change-management project of its kind.
Mr Guenier was Chief Executive of the Central Computing and
Telecommunications Agency in 1996, reporting to the Cabinet Office, and was
subsequently appointed Executive Director of Taskforce 2000 by the DTI. For
20 years before that he had been chief executive of various technology based
businesses where he led several successful large projects involving
extensive changes in working processes and practice.
ABSTRACT
The Department of Health has made an obvious and avoidable mistake by not
ensuring that individual clinicians were informed about, and adequately
consulted on, Government plans requiring them to be the users of England’s
new nationwide healthcare and socialcare information and communications
systems, known collectively as the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
Despite strong and authoritative evidence to the contrary, DoH policy
appears to be to involve clinicians only when the new systems can be
demonstrated as a fait accompli.
The author considers some of the possible bases of the DoH’s approach,
which is probably a main cause of end-user disaffection — a disaffection
that shows signs of threatening the viability of the entire scheme.
The author points to the urgent need for strong leadership and an
energetic programme to get all staff, especially clinicians, willingly
engaged in realising the objectives of the National Programme.
Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2005; 22(2): 24–5. |
