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Title: An unhealthy deal
Author: Alan Lenton
Date: 08 October 2006 10:07:16 +01:00 or Sun, 08 October 2006 10:07:16 +01:00
Summary: [8-10-2006] Accenture has pulled out of a major NHS contract.
Body: Accenture has pulled out of a crucial 2bn UK pounds (US$3.8bn) contract at the centre of the UK National Health Service (NHS) IT upgrade. I hold no torch for the likes of Accenture, but their reasons for walking away from this contract seem to me to be only too reasonable. Apart from anything else it would have lost US$450 million this year alone.
The original spec for the work was badly defined and the financial terms of the contract were onerous for the suppliers, being written by people with no experience of large IT contracts (the NHS got rid of all programming and systems staff years ago). There was no buy in from the people who are supposed to use the system, and the NHS was unable to provide their share of programmers and analysts to work on the shambles. The latter problem was not surprising since the adverts I saw for computer personnel were offering around one third of the going rate for the qualifications they were requiring.
Accenture have handed over their part of the project to a bunch called Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). According to Accenture, CSC managed to get 8 systems completed over the last three years, while Accenture managed to complete 800. I'd take that with a pinch of salt, since the last official statistics show Accenture at 4,820 systems installed against CSC with 3,208 installed. You can do anything with figures. Bottom line, I don't think CSC will do any better than Accenture, unless they've got deeper pockets and can sustain bigger losses.
On the other hand it's also likely that the scandal of the effect of all this disruption on the health system will force the government to change tack and do the whole thing differently. Only time will tell - but one thing is for sure, the effect of the publicity has for the first time opened up this can of worms to public view.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/accenture_failure_success/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/accenture_lsp_exit/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/09/28/accenture_npfit/
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