No2ID : trust and competency in Government IT

Call for review of NHS IT upgrade [BBC],

The £6.2bn upgrade of the NHS IT system needs to be independently investigated, leading computer scientists say.

The group of academics have written to MPs questioning whether the plans are robust enough to meet the demands of the NHS

And then from the original Computer Weekly article:

Suppliers say they have been warned off speaking about the NPfIT, and IT directors in the NHS fear being victimised if they openly express critical views. Academics, who are independent of the NHS, can express their concerns without fear of repercussions
:
Two weeks ago Accenture, the main supplier to two of the five NHS “clusters” in England, announced a predicted write-off of £260m on the contract. The share price of its main subcontractor iSoft, which supplies three of the clusters, has more than halved since it warned at the end of January that its profits on the NPfIT would be lower than forecast.

Another major supplier, BT, has been fined more than once for poor performance. A fourth, CSC, has announced significant job losses and put itself up for sale

So when the Government brings in a compulsory ID system (and it will be effectively compulsory as soon as it’s introduced) that hold biometric data on everyone in the UK, that is queried who-knows-how-many-times per day, should we have confidence in it?

The Government has not successfully completed any of the ambitious computer projects it has embarked on while in power. This does not bode well for the NIR, which is bigger and more complex than any yet attempted. A large number of IT experts have expressed doubts about the potential for success of this database.

No2ID