£6.2bn, the price of a failed project - but don't tell anyone

The NHS and failed IT projects – it rolls off the tongue like money down a drain. Unfortunately, when the NHS wastes money on dodgy systems it doesn’t just mean an inconvenience for the public and another dent in the public purse (these two outcomes are taken for granted by other government departments these days), it is actually putting patients at serious risk. For some reason, best known to the incompetent technogeeks within the Government, the implementation of a multi-billion-pound computer system linking doctors and hospitals is flawed. One of the executives from the system providers, Fujitsu, blames a lack of vision and poor understanding of the project meaning that it “isn’t working and isn’t going to work”. He also stated that the £6.2bn (yes you read that right – six point two billion) project is in danger of patient care not being delivered "effectively”.Needless to say, this project is shrouded in secrecy according to the Times. If I wanted to the government to spend £6.2bn worth of public money on an IT project I wouldn’t want it shrouded in secrecy, yet that is exactly how the government treats the tax payer - with total contempt.

To summarise, the government has wasted £6.2bn on a project that isn’t working and isn’t ever going to work and have shrouded the whole thing in secrecy and we, the mugs who have had to pay for this waste of money, are put at risk as a result. Extraordinary.