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Tony Collins is an investigative and campaigning journalist and former Executive Editor at Computer Weekly. With his friend and colleague David Bicknell he wrote "Crash", which found common factors in the world's largest public and private sector IT-related failures. He wrote "Open Verdict", a book on the strange deaths of defence scientists. He writes, and gives talks, on the tensions and disputes between suppliers and users.

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Lessons from IT-related project failures - Logica's CE

Wise words on the NPfIT and other failures from Logica's CE Andy Green

Published 11:37, 13 March 12

Evan Davis and three business leaders have discussed on BBC R4's The Bottom Line the failure of IT-related projects, particularly the NHS IT scheme NPfIT.

The BBC programme was entitled "Cock-ups and Conspiracies" and had as one of the guests Andy Green, Chief Executive of Logica. He said of the NPfIT:

"It is a stupid thing for the supply chain to have answered, and it’s a stupid thing for the customer to have asked for."

Green, who joined Logica as CEO in January 2008, said he was in one of the bidders for the NPfIT when he was at BT.

Evan Davis said the NHS IT scheme had cost billions, achieved little and had been running for years. He asked Green: "What's the story?"

Green said: "What had been promised by the supply chain was fantastic software that had not been designed yet that was going to completely revolutionise hospitals and delivering that proved to be horrendous... in the end it is foolish to set out on a programme that is going to take seven years with a fixed procurement up front, which says we all know everything about it ..."

Fuller article on Andy Green's comments.

BBC R4's The Bottom Line - Cock-ups and conspiracies.

Tags: cisco, government it, it-related failures, logica, nhs it scheme, npfit, public sector