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Public Sector: IT Projects

My Lords, the NHS Connecting for Health programme, if its constituent parts are put together, is the largest civilian IT contract in the world. It started in 2002 as the National Programme for IT. The Government’s central vision was to establish an integrated system known as the NHS Care Records Service, consisting of detailed electronic patient records that could be used by GPs and in local healthcare communities. Alongside that is a national summary clinical record known as the spine. In addition, the programme comprises an electronic booking system for patients known as choose and book; electronic prescriptions to enable GPs to transmit prescriptions instantly to pharmacies; an e-mail service for NHS staff; computer-accessible X-rays; and a broadband network known as N3. To achieve all this, Ministers took a conscious decision to centralise procurement for the entire NHS in England at the Department of Health. This was achieved extremely rapidly. By 2004, contracts worth £6.2 billion had been awarded to four lead service providers, covering the five designated regions of the country. The total cost over 10 years, according tothe most recent NAO estimate, is £12.4 billion. Nevertheless, about a year ago, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, was reported as saying that the full cost was likely to be in the region of £20 billion.