From The Sun: “Run fire service like John Lewis”

Posted on 06/03/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

It’s not often that the prospects for mutuals – or John Lewis, for that matter – make it into The Sun. But this story takes the mutuals bandwagon into areas it hasn’t been previously.

The Sun’s story – ‘Run fire service like John Lewis – refers to the Cleveland Fire Brigade, which reportedly ‘plans to turn itself into a mutual — just like John Lewis stores where staff share profits.’

The story quotes Cleveland’s chief fire officer Ian Hayton saying: “Combining a public service ethos with an entrepreneurial drive for growth will empower our staff.”

It also quotes Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude saying, “We are opening up public services to get more bang for the taxpayers’ buck.

“Frontline workers know best how to do their job. That’s why mutuals can be the best way to run things.”

However, an article on Public Finance makes the point that the ‘mutual option’ was always a non-starter for public audit.

It argues that the Audit Commission’s abandonment of the ‘mutual option’ for audit follows a weekend disclosure that police forces are being pressured by the Home Office ‘to outsource great swathes of front as well as back-office work.’

Audit Commission: the feeling’s not mutual

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, mutualisation, mutuals, public sector, public services, social economy, social enterprise

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NAO says HMRC is tackling tax evasion but needs to further exploit IT systems’ potential

Posted on 05/03/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has applauded HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) work in tackling tax evasion to deliver £4.32 billion of additional tax yield between 2006 and 2011. HMRC also reduced staff numbers and introduced a range of improvements in its compliance work.

But, the NAO says, although the Department has introduced new IT capabilities to identify incidences of evasion more effectively, it is not yet exploiting the full potential of the new systems. It has also had to defer and reduce the scope of projects to keep within annual budgetary limits, leading to reductions in benefits.

According to the NAO’s report, the Compliance and Enforcement Programme cost £387 million to 2011-12 and was made up of over 40 projects intended to increase compliance yield – the measure of additional tax arising from compliance work – by £4.56 billion between 2006-2011.

Against that target, the Programme actually reported additional yield of £4.32 billion over the five years to March 2011, with HMRC forecasting that it will generate an additional £8.87 billion of yield between 2011-12 and 2014-15. However, the NAO points out, HMRC will not achieve all of the Programme’s forecast benefits because of changes to scope or slippage in delivering projects, as well as over-optimism in its forecasts.

HMRC reduced staff numbers by the planned amount of 3,374 full time equivalents by the end of 2008-09, two years ahead of schedule. It also generated an improvement in productivity -defined as the level of yield generated by each full time equivalent – of approximately 36 per cent, below its forecast of a 42 per cent improvement. HMRC did not routinely measure the impact of the Programme on customer experience.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said:

“This major programme has helped HMRC to increase tax yield substantially and has introduced ways of working which will strengthen HMRC’s compliance work in future.

“The Department could, though, achieve better value for money from its investment in compliance work by improved understanding of the impact of individual projects and ensuring that its staff have the capacity to exploit new systems to the full.”

On improving HMRC’s compliance work, the NAO report says the following:

 “The Programme has improved HMRC’s ability to undertake compliance work but it has yet to exploit the full potential of the new systems. In particular, the new ICT systems can substantially improve how HMRC assesses evasion risks to identify cases for investigation. HMRC is embedding new systems and approaches into working practices. We assessed the implementation of a sample of projects:

• Project design. Overall, HMRC managed design phases well but, particularly on projects to implement new ICT systems, it did not sufficiently consider redesigning business processes or developing the staff capability needed to exploit the full potential of the new technologies.

• Implementation. HMRC did not always communicate clearly the rationale for projects and, although it provided training and guidance, these were not always timely or requirements were underestimated.

• Assessing the performance of new systems. HMRC has established management information on the use and performance of new systems and, over time, will seek to use this to better understand the impact on business performance.

HMRC – The compliance and enforcement programme

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, government, Government IT, IT projects, project management, public sector

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Australian Gateway Review key in revealing extent of Victoria Police IT project deficiencies

Posted on 05/03/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

A report has found that the police in the state of Victoria in Australia lacked the capacity to deliver a major IT project and wasted millions of dollars on a failed system.

According to The Australian, the force had lost around $30 million as a result of the decision to abandon the replacement of its Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) system, said the report by an Australian QC, Jack Rush.

“The investigations of the inquiry into the LEAP replacement and two other IT projects at Victoria Police revealed a lack of project management methodology and discipline leading to systemic mismanagement,” the report said.

“The inquiry identified a culture within Victoria Police that cost overruns were acceptable but above all, there was a lack of any form of strategy to define the IT needs and requirements of Victoria Police for the future.”

Victoria Police admitted last year it had underestimated the cost of replacing its inefficient, ageing LEAP system by $100m, before it abandoned the replacement project. 

Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said he would adopt the report’s recommendation that the force seek external assistance through an advisory group and had already been consulting external experts.

“Victoria Police needs help in delivering these projects and I will certainly be reaching out both nationally and internationally to make sure that we get this right,” he said.

A key Gateway Review was instrumental in the ending of LEAP, as the report discusses:

“The PIMS preliminary business case was subject to a Gateway Review in late July 2011. The scrutiny of this review process appears to have been the cause of considerable reflection at senior levels of Victoria Police command. The Gateway Review indicated interviewees advised that the preliminary business case did not provide sufficient justification for additional funding to complete the replacement of LEAP; and varied greatly in their expectations and understanding of what outcomes the Policing Information Management System (PIMS) would provide and the technology necessary to achieve outcomes.

The Gateway Review observed “… that best practice and strategic assessment begins with a fundamental understanding of what the problem is that requires fixing and the strategic response that the organisation is looking for.” The review found that the PIMS project was deficient in these respects:

  • the strategic vision for Victoria Police as it related to the PIMS project;
  • current and preferred policing workflow;
  • business requirements based upon the operational needs of modern policing; and
  • information management plan

Rush Report

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, Gateway reviews, Government IT, IT projects, project management

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How a Dutch SME is helping make software energy efficient

Posted on 02/03/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

It may take a little time, but in the future organisations will be able to track the energy efficiency of their software and know how much it is costing them to run.

It follows an idea developed by a Dutch SME that specialises in the quality of software. Amsterdam-based Software Improvement Group (SIG) has partnered with the nearby Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences)  to create the Software Energy Footprint Lab (SEFLab).

SEFLab is now setting out to establish how the quality of organisations’ software code affects their energy consumption. The work will couple SIG’s knowledge and expertise in software monitoring  with the enthusiasm and technical expertise of the local university students.

Campaign4Change asked Dr Joost Visser, SIG’s Head of Research how it is going about tackling the energy efficiency of software, and what elements of the problem it needs to examine.

Joost Visser: There are basically two types of this problem that you can break this down and look into. One is across the software lifecycle. So just as with software defects where the later you find them the more expensive they are, so with energy efficiency, if you try to optimise your software once it’s already in production, you may have to make an explicit investment that might not provide an adequate payback. But if you already know what requirements you need to keep in mind at the design stage for energy efficiency, then, for example, you might actually choose a different communication protocol which can improve your efficiency. At each of the development process, there are things to do: in requirements, in the coding and in the testing.

Another issue is the hierarchical level of software. The thing you might see as the consumer is the application. But actually that’s not the first level that impacts energy efficiency. The first level is the user themselves. In a car, the person that is actually touching the accelerator has a lot of influence on how much fuel you would use. To reduce your fuel usage, you may need to change your (driving) behaviour. The same thing applies with users of software. If they know what the consequences are of clicking here and searching there, they might behave slightly differently and it might have an impact on energy efficiency. If you give people feedback, they will behave differently.

C4C: What sort of user feedback have you had?

JV: We did a survey around 9 months ago where we asked a lot of users about these types of things and the overwhelming conclusion of that survey was that, ‘Yes, we would like to change our behaviour but at the moment we have nothing to go on. We don’t know how to make that change.’

There is a premium on green products. People want to be green – but they have to be able to make a meaningful choice. There are various elements to consider. First there is the application layer. Then we have the various components from which the software application is built: a database; a runtime environment framework, and Java as a virtual machine. Then underneath there’s the operating system. Microsoft has made a big effort in its operating system to take energy efficiency into account but I think there are many more steps to be made there. Then there is communication. You have to think about your mobile device uses radio to communicate when you’re browsing. You may have to make an explicit switch to a Wi-Fi network which might be more energy efficient. Is it more energy efficient than 3G? We don’t know yet. That is one of the things we’re going to find out.

C4C: One of the areas that many organisations are talking about is the impact of consumerisation and the use of touch devices creating a new user interface that organisations’ applications will have to be rewritten for. What does than mean from an energy efficiency perspective?

JV: One of the very very real challenges now is that we want to go to those new devices with mobile strategies but time to market dictates how we think about energy efficiency. So you might choose to do develop once on different devices but on many devices, there’s no accounting for the energy consumption. You might go to HTML5, for instance, but it might consume much more energy than when you create a native application. I think by making the choices visible, we will enable people to choose. We will take away the time-to-market issue and people will be able to say,’ OK, we can have this a couple of weeks later and still make things provably more energy efficient’, which consumers will appreciate.

C4C: Will we get to a stage where the consumer will think about the energy efficiency, or are they really only going to be thinking about the coolness of the product i.e. I want an iPad and I don’t really care what the energy efficiency is?

JV: Let’s be realistic about this. Consumers want to get hold of new things. They’re right – they’re consumers. So the coolness of the device has to incorporate the energy efficiency. It’s a lifestyle product. If you offer that, they’ll want it.

C4C: But in the corporate world previously, the IT department would buy the product. Now the user, the consumer, is buying the product and he or she wants a cool devices and they don’t really know about the energy efficiency side of things.

JV: If you compare it to other types of products, fridges, for instance, suppliers do compete on energy efficiency. They all want to be rated A, and that’s partly to do with regulation and partly to do with the demands of the customer. But an essential thing to make that work is that there is a measurement, a consumable rating, that’s meaningful. And now with software, we are developing the science behind it.

Is it about green hardware? Or is it using an energy efficient battery? Or just using a bigger battery? It gives you as a consumer the incentive to use it.  There is also the recycling of the batteries to be taken into account, of course.

C4C: Going back to the way the user is using the software. If you take the car analogy, ultimately there is a cost for you if you’re not driving efficiently. How do we portray those costs in terms of energy efficiency of software?

JV: Maybe you should get feedback about your consumption, not in terms of the litre of fuel you used, but in terms of euros. You want to make that last step. Similarly in software there is a lot of knowledge about CPU cycles and megabytes. But in the end you want to know what is the calorific value of what you’re doing. And that has to be put into some perspective.

C4C: If you were to take it to the nth degree, would you be able to get an idea of how much electricity or energy you had used in your browsing session?

JV: If you keep all your tabs open, do you as a user know if that has any impact, or is that negligible? If you knew it was consuming energy, maybe you’d take the trouble of closing them because it has value for you. Energy consumption goes further than simply your own device. If you’re browsing, you’re pulling information in, and the server starts doing things for you and data starts being generated. It might be stored, consuming energy, for the next 50 years. And it makes a difference how it gets archived or stored. All of this has to be made simple for the consumer to comprehend. Then there’s the organisational side, those organisations that have bespoke software built for them.

They might be interested in ‘green’ from the idealistic point of view. Their clients are interested too and they want to be socially responsible. But those organisations are also very much interested in the cost aspect. Energy costs are rising and it’s not just costs, but scarcity too. If more work implies more energy, at some point you may not be able to get it as easily as before. Either you will get it back in higher energy costs or it just won’t be there.

C4C: Is there any way you can create a benchmark or figure that talks about how much inefficient software usage can cost?

JV: Not yet. For data centre efficiency, there is the PUE. It has lots of drawbacks as well. But is has had a good impact and made choices more clear. We are working on it. We have some development of KPIs. But it’s hard. There’s a real research challenge here. One reason is the mapping of software applications to hardware. It’s not one to one. We may have one software application running on many pieces of hardware and due to virtualisation and other techniques, we have many applications running on the same hardware. With the hardware you can map how much energy goes through it. But how do you map that to the consumer of the energy i.e. the software? That’s a very difficult puzzle.

Another thing is that we’d all like to have a benchmark. To have a benchmark, you need comparable things. But think about it. You have online payments for a bank versus using a browser. The type of work you do with the software, the user transactions, so to speak, is completely different.  If one consumes a certain amount of energy and the other consumes double that, what does that mean? Does that mean the one that consumes more is worse? Not necessarily. It may simply be doing more work. So we have to develop KPIs that allow meaningful comparison. One suggestion is to how much energy per function point. That sounds good, but actually it’s completely wrong, because a function point is about functional size and how many features you offer.  Yet it doesn’t have anything about the workload in it. You have to involve the workload into the KPI otherwise it cannot work.

Now workload is something that’s completely different between different vendors and operations systems and end users. Comparing an operating system to an end user application will not work. That’s why we’re trying to build these up through the lab.

C4C: You could end up having two years of discussions between vendors over what would be an appropriate standard for energy efficient software, couldn’t you?

JV: The way to make these protracted processes shorter is to have people with lots of initiative who just go for it in their own sphere of influence, and show that it can be done, and create a reality that others can follow. International standardisation processes take a long time, but you shouldn’t wait for it. You should go for it.

Links

Software Energy Footprint Lab

8 ways to make your software more energy efficient

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Posted in Campaign4Change, Climate Change, energy efficiency, greentech, sustainability, virtualisation

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New child support system has 90,000 requirements – in phase one

Posted on 29/02/2012 | 3 comments

                               A new old-style government IT disaster?

By Tony Collins

While officials in the Cabinet Office offcials try to simplify and cut costs of Government IT, a part of the Department for Work and Pensions has commissioned a system with 90,000 requirements in phase one.

The projected costs of the child maintenance system have risen by 85% and the delivery date has slipped by more than two years.

Even with 90,000 requirements, phase one, which is due to go live in October, excludes 70 requirements that are “deemed critical” says a report published today by the National Audit Office.

The NAO report indicates that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has commissioned an old-style large IT system using traditional developing techniques and relying on large companies.

G-Cloud and SMEs have not featured in the Commission’s IT strategy – and it abandoned agile techniques last year on its child maintenance project.

The Commission put the cost of its new child maintenance system at £149m in January 2011. Ten months later it put the cost at £275m, an 85% increase. The Commission was unable to give the NAO a full explanation for the difference.

Lessons from past failures not learned?

Today’s NAO report says there is a risk the Commission will repeat mistakes by the Child Support Agency whose IT system and business processes were criticised in several Parliamentary reports. The Commission takes in the work of the Child Support Agency – and indeed runs its own systems and the Child Support Agency’s in parallel.

Officials at the Commission told the NAO they have a good track record of holding back IT releases until they are satisfied they will work.  “Nevertheless, we found that the Commission is at risk of repeating many of the mistakes of 2003,” said the NAO. Those mistakes include over-optimism and a lack of internal expertise to handle suppliers.

Mixing “agile” and “waterfall” doesn’t work

Initially civil servants at the Commission tried to “mix and match” agile and traditional developing techniques – which Agile advocates say should not be attempted.

In 2011 the Commission gave up on agile and “reverted to a more traditional approach to system development” says the NAO report.

The mix and match approach meant there were two distinct routes for specifying requirements and “resulted in duplicated, conflicting and ambiguous specifications”.  The Commission did not have previous experience of using the agile approach.

The Commission’s child maintenance system was due to go live in April 2010 but the delivery date has slipped three times. Phase one is now due to go live in October 2012 and phase two in July next year but the NAO report raises questions about whether the go-lives will happen successfully. The Commission has not planned in its financial estimates for the failure of the system.

The NAO finds that the Commission has struggled to make its requirements for the new system clear. The Commission’s main developer Tata Consulting Services has had protracted discussions over the meaning and implementation of requirements.

The NAO also hints that IT costs may be out of control. It says the Commission may not secure value for money without properly considering alternative options for restructuring and “adequately controlling its IT development …”

These are some of the NAO’s findings:

IT costs could increase further

“The new system is based on ‘commercial off-the-shelf’ products. However, a recent audit by Oracle identified that the performance, maintainability and adaptability of the new system would be key risks. This could increase the cost of supporting the system. The scheme does not yet include plans for the integration with HM Revenue & Customs’ Real Time Information system due to be implemented in 2013, or introducing Universal Credit because of the differing timescales,” says the NAO which adds:

“Achieving the Commission’s plans without further cost increases or delays appears unlikely. The Commission reported to the audit committee in October 2011 on the high risk that the change programme may not deliver phase two functionality within agreed timescales … The Commission did not develop a benefits realisation plan until November 2011.”

103,000 of Commission’s 1.1m cases are handled manually

“Ongoing technical problems have resulted in a large number of cases being removed from the IT system and managed manually. These are known as clerical cases … The Commission has had to operate the ‘old’ and ‘current’ schemes in parallel.  Due to flaws in the IT systems for each scheme, some 100,000 cases have had to be processe:d separately by clerical staff at a cost of £48 million,” says the NAO. It takes 900 contractors to manage the clerical cases.

Comment

Despite numerous NAO reports on failures of Government IT-based projects over the past 30 years the disasters are still happening, with the same mistakes repeated: over-optimism in every aspect of the project including timetables and financial estimates; excessive complexity and over-specification, no sign of cost-consciousness and, worst of all, an apparent indifference to being held accountable for a major failure.

A glance at the monthly outgoings of the Commission (well done to the coalition for requiring departments and agencies to publish contracts over £25,000) show sizeable and regular payments to familiar names among the large suppliers: HP Enterprise Services (formerly EDS), Capgemini, Tata Consultancy Services, BT Global Services and Capita. There is hardly an SME in sight and no sign of imaginative thinking.

Meanwhile some senior officials at the Commission put in monthly expenses for thousands of pounds in travel, accomodation and subsistence for “Commission meetings”. One wonders: to what useful effect?

Officials at the Cabinet Office are trying to change the culture of departments and agencies. They are encouraging departmental heads to do things differently. They advocate the use of  SMEs to show how new ways of working can trounce traditional approaches to projects.

But the Cabinet Office has little influence on the Department of Work and Pensions. Indeed the DWP has lost its impressive chief innovator James Gardner.

We praise the NAO for noting that the Commission risks repeating the IT-related and project management mistakes of the Child Support Agency. But we note with concern that the NAO still puts up with Whitehall’s non-publication of  Gateway reviews, which are independent reports on the progress or otherwise of big and risky IT-based projects.

Would the Commission have been so apparently careless of the risks if it had known that regular Gateway reports on its shortcomings would be published?

How many more government IT-based projects are late, over budget and at risk of failing, their weaknesses hidden by an unwritten agreement between the coalition and civil servants to keep Gateway reviews secret?

NAO report – Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission: cost reduction

Government repeating child support mistakes – ComputerworldUK

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Posted in Agile, capacity building, change, change management, CIO, Gateway reviews, Government IT, India, IT projects, managing change, managing outsourced services, openness and transparency, operational issues, outsourcing, private sector lessons for the public sector, project management, public sector, public services

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Worth reading on mutuals: “Are public sector spin-outs on shaky ground?”

Posted on 27/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

For those contemplating setting  up public sector mutuals, the headline on a piece by Craig Dearden-Phillips in the Guardian about their legal and contractual prospects may start ringing alarm bells.

“Are public sector spin-outs on shaky ground?’ sounds a very pessimistic view in the wake of a successful action by Michael Lloyd to prevent 3000 NHS staff being transferred into Gloucestershire Care Services, a new social enterprise.

The outcome of the case, as Dearden-Phillips points out, is likely to affect the way in which the NHS and local councils approach the question of how they set up mutuals and social enterprises.

“Last week’s events in Gloucestershire were, without doubt, a setback for the mutuals agenda in the NHS and councils,” he says. “Lloyd may well rue the day he took the action he did, particularly if those NHS services end up in the hands of for-profit operators. But Gloucestershire was not a decisive reversal. What events there showed was not that spin-outs from public bodies cannot be engineered, but that those leading them need to navigate the law, and public opinion, with care.”

Links

Leigh Day & Co Solicitors’ statement

Stroud Against the Cuts statement

Stepping Out

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, mutualisation, mutuals, procurement, public sector, public services

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Has the CIO become the Chief Invisible Officer?

Posted on 27/02/2012 | 1 comment

I read an article in the Wall St Journal today all about the role of chief financial officers (CFO) in increasing investments in IT to maintain a competitive edge.

The piece refers to a Colorado company, CH2M Hill, which is cutting back on expenses like corporate events and bonuses for employees, yet it plans to boost its $100 million-a-year IT budget by upto 20% this year. In part, the money will go to fund new systems that will make it easier for workers to use a variety of mobile devices on the job.

“We’re very concerned about the economy and trying to take some measures to cut costs,” says Mike Lucki, CH2M’s chief financial officer. “But this is an investment that we need to make to stay competitive. If you don’t do it, you’re not in the game.”

The thought struck me that when I read that quote that how often do you ever hear a CFO talking about getting a competitive edge? Shouldn’t that be the language of the CEO? And, aspirationally, what the CIO should be saying?

There’s nothing in this Wall St Journal piece about the role of the CIO. That’s not a criticism of the piece at all, simply  the fact that CIOs seem to be anonymous in the corporate culture.  As the article suggests, ‘CFOs are often the executives calling the shots on tech purchases. According to research firm Gartner, for instance, 44% of IT departments report to CFOs.’ The article seems to suggest that there are IT departments – but no IT leaders. (Or at least, in this case, none that the Wall St Journal deemed noteworthy enough to speak with)

Has the CIO become the Chief Invisible Officer? Perhaps, to take a line from Mike Lucki’s quote, it’s time CIOs made a strategic investment (in their visibility) to stay competitive, because, to nick another line, “If you don’t do it, you’re not in the game.”

Or has the corporate balance of power so shifted in current times that the corporate officer that pays the piper is so clearly now calling the tune?

Is it time that CIOs started to shout more from the rooftops about their value?

Heads of finance hate big-bang IT projects

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Posted in Campaign4Change, CFO, CIO, IT projects

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TPP stops gift offers to GPs

Posted on 27/02/2012 | 1 comment

By Tony Collins

IT supplier TPP has stopped offering gifts to GPs while it has talks with NHS Connecting for Health and CSC.

TPP has offered tea at The Ritz, theatre tickets, Marks and Spencer vouchers and chocolates to GPs in return for their hosting demonstrations of its SystmOne  product.

Parts of the NHS have clearly-defined rules on the acceptance of gifts or hospitality, though the rules do not apply to GPs. NHS Sheffield tells its staff:

“All offers of hospitality should be approached with caution. Modest hospitality, for example, a drink and sandwich during a visit or a working lunch is normal and reasonable and does not require approval of a manager. Offers of hospitality relating to theatre evenings, sporting fixtures, or holiday accommodation, or other hospitality must be declined…”

The guidance adds:

“Casual gifts by contractors or others, e.g. at Christmas time, must not be in any way connected with the performance of duties …”

On 30 January 2012 Campaign4Change reported that TPP has offered gifts to tea at The Ritz or two tickets to a West End show to GP leaders in return for helping to organise an event that would give the company a chance to demonstrate its systems.

TPP SystmOne has said in its marketing literature that its systems hold a third of the country’s patient records and have about 100,000 users.

In reply to our questions about TPP’s offers to GPs, the Department of Health said in January that TPP had ceased offering the incentives after a DH intervention.

“We were made aware and asked the supplier about this activity,” said a Department of Health spokesperson. “The supplier has subsequently confirmed that they have ceased offering incentives to GPs.”

Ten days later Pulse reported that TPP was still offering incentives to GPs. Pulse quoted TPP as saying that it had “momentarily stopped offering the incentives over Christmas but will be resuming during February”.

TPP told Pulse: ‘The incentives were offered only to GPs and practice managers and were completely optional … ‘Our ‘Tea at the Ritz’ offer actually costs considerably less than the cost of catering for such a practice meeting. We at TPP appreciate that GPs and their staff are extremely busy and so any thank-you gifts we offer staff are simply that, a thank-you for an hour or two of their time.’

Campaign4Change then questioned whether the DH is powerless to stop TPP offering gifts.

We said that a level playing field for suppliers would mean that all suppliers offered tea at the Ritz or Marks and Spencer vouchers in return for a chance to demo their systems to GPs. Alternatively suppliers could agree that none offers gifts.

Now Pulse has reported that TPP has stopped offering gifts to GP, at least while it has talks with CSC and  NHS  Connecting for Health. TPP is quoted in Pulse as saying:

Obviously TPP would not have begun offering incentives as a thank-you for a GP’s time, if we were not highly confident that we are not doing anything wrong legally or ethically. That remains our position.

However following recent communication with CSC and Connecting for Health we have postponed the sending of marketing material that offers incentives for SystmOne demonstrations, until all parties have agreed a way forward.

There may have been miscommunications in the past about what incentives were offered, when and to whom, but TPP has always been upfront about any promotional incentives that are offered. All parties are now keen to ensure we can agree on ways to advertise and promote our products whilst maintaining our high ethical standards.’

‘In the meantime we will continue to consult with GPs, their staff and any NHS guidelines, in order to gain feedback about the best ways to demonstrate SystmOne to them.

Comment:

Whether or not the talks between TPP, CSC and the Department of Health might have been prompted, in part, by recent publicity over TPP’s offering of gifts, we’re pleased the talks are taking place.

If all IT suppliers to the NHS offered gifts to GPs then some doctors could end up seeing IT demos based in part on the attractiveness of the gifts on offer.

Links:

IT company’s “tea at the Ritz” offer to GPs.

Can officials stop TPP offering gifts to GPs?

Is TPP defying assurance on gifts to GPs? – Pulse

Software firm pulls tea at the Ritz incentives for GPs – Pulse

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Posted in managing outsourced services, NHS, npfit, public sector

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Ambitious health records IT project bags US budget increase

Posted on 24/02/2012 | 1 comment

By David Bicknell

Electronic health records appear to be the three magic words to help unlock an increase in your IT budget, especially if you’re looking to deliver a groundbreaking health IT project for US services veterans.

According to this story,  the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would see a 6.9% increase, with much of the money being spent on improved electronic health records. The 2013 budget proposal put forward by the Obama Administration would see $3.3bn being spent on IT, a $216m increase over the current budget.

2012 will see major investment in an ongoing IT project to integrate Department of Veterans Affairs health records with Department of Defence health records. Currently, more than 100 VA employees are working on the programme, with over 20 projects in planning mode, including single sign-on and a plan to unify VA and DOD pharmaceutical systems.

Department of Veterans Affairs press release referring to IT budgets

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Posted in Government IT, health records, IT projects, US Government

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Never knowingly undersold: the John Lewis ‘mutual model’

Posted on 23/02/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Just publicity. Well, unwittingly, John Lewis is getting plenty of it. It’s gone from being a retail store, to being the mutuals model, to being associated with care homes, and now, as this article suggests,  its name is being linked with schools.

Is there something in this? Have we truly stumbled on a new way of doing things in the public sector? Or, is it that we are all, as is our wont, looking for a label that we can apply for mutuals, and John Lewis seems to fit the bill?

When we have all finally moved on and gained greater ‘mutual maturity’, so to speak, other models will be more frequently cited. Until then,  you can probably expect that in a conversation where mutuals are cited, John Lewis is likely to be mentioned too.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, mutualisation, mutuals, public services, SME, social economy, social enterprise

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