#WesStreeting thinks #technology (by which he seems to mean digital technologies) will make the #NHS more efficient & means we can stop pouring money into a 'leaky bucket'.
Quite apart the vacuity of such techno-boosterism, you would have thought in the wake of the #HorizonIT#Fujitsu disaster, anyone thinking deploying technology is the answer, might want to be more careful.
Many people are watching Mr Streeting & are getting worried about how he thinks about NHS reform!
@djr@ChrisMayLA6 it's not inevitable that very large IT systems should be disasters. The World Wide Web, for example, works pretty well, in the main. However, the common factor in UK public sector IT failures may will be #Fujitsu – or rather, that division of Fujitsu which used to be ICL.
@simon_brooke@djr@ChrisMayLA6 The web is not a large IT system though. It's a lot of very small IT systems bound together by a collection of mutually managed interoperability protocols. Same with email, same with bank interoperation, Mastadon, DNS, same with many many other things. This is not chance. Systems practice, economic models of competition, information theory and technology and design best practices all clearly explain chunks of why this is so.
@etchedpixels@djr@ChrisMayLA6 the interoperation is the system. The open protocols are a necessary (but not sufficient) guarantee of its function at scale.
@simon_brooke@etchedpixels@djr@ChrisMayLA6 it is my understanding that the Scottish NHS has had an integrated national system for some time, but I have no idea how well it works.
@CaptainJanegay@simon_brooke@djr@ChrisMayLA6 Crapita take every opportunity to fill their boots and under deliver. Not surprisingly ex politicians occupy spots in the senior ‘management’.
@Wen@simon_brooke@djr@ChrisMayLA6 From what I've heard they're also a terrible employer, no effective health & safety management, crap leave policies & retaliatory firings
@ChrisMayLA6 I've worked in both Local Government and whole range of private sector projects.
Successful technology is driven by small teams who care about what they are building. Often they care enough to understand the needs of there users and stakeholder and deliver a working solution.
Sadly projects in government and big companies are driven by different levers, often focused on inaccurate cost metrics, and thus consistently fail.
Good technology requires empathy and passion, that costs.
@ChrisMayLA6 It's a historic labour (English bit anyway) disease - they blew billions on a total disaster of an NHS IT program under Blair despite the tech and medical world telling them it was a ridiculous project as planned and implemented (or mostly not implemented).
@pasquires@etchedpixels@ChrisMayLA6 I remember going to a presentation by the civil servant in charge of that NHS IT project. I was appalled. It was as if none of the advances in software project management of the previous two decades had happened. Waterfall design of a giant, monolithic system,, with minimal input from actual users. It was immediately obvious that the project would fail.
@ChrisMayLA6 I don't know if you saw the information about a hustings in his constituency last week - a British-Palestinian lady was voted as a third party candidate unanimously by all who attended (around 200, I think). His constituency has a large British Muslim population, and his majority is only about 7,000.
I would sooo love it if he lost to her!
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