The Tony Collins Blog
Tony Collins
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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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Officials investigate leak of FOI request to IT supplier
The Department of Health is investigating how details of an FOI request were leaked to a IT supplier that then discussed having the request withdrawn
by Tony Collins
The Department of Health is investigating how details of an FOI request it received into a possible conflict of interest involving IT suppliers came to be passed to one of the companies named in the inquiry. The DOH is also looking...
February 23, 2011 7:00 AM Read Full Post
Info Commissioner calls for routine publication of IT Gateway reviews
Amid the Cabinet Office's unexplained silence on why it hasn't published Gateway "progress" reports on IT projects, the Information Commissioner makes his views known to MPs
by Tony Collins
In a paper to MPs, the Information Commissioner says he wants to "highlight the possibility to improve the transparency of IT procurement by further publication of gateway reviews".The Commissioner's paper has been submitted to the Public Administration Select Committee which...
February 22, 2011 1:48 PM Read Full Post
CSC likely to keep its NHS IT contracts
Officials are threatening to end CSC’s NPfIT contracts - but the end is not in sight.
by Tony Collins
The Department of Health is doing the right things legally: on 4 February 2011 it notified CSC of a breach of contract, relating to a delay in achieving a milestone at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust. The breach is disputed by...
February 18, 2011 9:53 AM Read Full Post
NAO: CIOs left out of key decisions, joining up IT hard to do - but £2bn IT projects stopped, and praise for SMEs, G-Cloud.
NAO report today gives first comprehensive, plain-speaking view of the problems with government IT and what lies ahead
by Tony Collins
The NAO has today published its first comprehensive and plain-speaking view of the problems with government IT and the difficulties facing the Cabinet Office and departmental CIOs as they try to effect change and cut costs. The NAO study - Landscape Review....
February 17, 2011 12:12 PM Read Full Post
Is CSC losing money on NHS IT?
If CSC is in a hole should it stop digging? asks Techmarketview
by Tony Collins
On 31 March 2010 the FT reported that "failing NHS supplier faces dismissal".The FT's Nicholas Timmins said: "The biggest single supplier to the £12bn NHS IT programme [CSC] is on the brink of being fired from a key part of...
February 10, 2011 12:42 PM Read Full Post
Cabinet Office defers publication of Gateway progress reports on IT projects
Cabinet Office drops a specific written requirement that departments publish Gateway progress reports. A setback for openness over Government IT schemes?
by Tony Collins
Whitehall has postponed by a year the publication of Gateway review reports and performance details on all ICT projects above £1m, ComputerworldUK.com has learned.Although the Government plans to implement many large and risky IT-based schemes, it is, for the time...
February 10, 2011 8:23 AM Read Full Post
Truths, half-truths and reports on big Gov't IT projects
Is the Rural Payments Agency’s Single Payment Scheme a reformed IT disaster? The truth may never emerge.
by Tony Collins
A common factor in big, flawed IT projects is the insistence of those involved that all is well. Critics of the project are depicted as cavilling, ill-informed, disaffected or politically-motivated. Or all four.Hence the National Programme for IT in the NHS,...
February 4, 2011 12:27 PM Read Full Post
Patients are "misled" over confidentiality of health e-records, say Oxford researchers
The risk to data privacy and confidentially is growing significantly say Oxford University researchers.
by Tony Collins
Researchers from Oxford University say that patients are not being adequately informed about possible secondary uses of their medical data for research and are "misled about the level of anonymisation of their data and the likelihood of re-identification"The criticism is...
February 3, 2011 1:10 PM Read Full Post
NAO criticises BBC award of contract to Siemens without new competition
Since the BBC took in-house an outsourced contract from Siemens, things have improved
by Tony Collins
The BBC Trust has today published a report it commissioned from the National Audit Office on the BBC’s management of its Digital Media Initiative (DMI). The DMI is a technology project designed to allow BBC staff to develop, create, share and...
February 1, 2011 2:02 PM Read Full Post
Head of HMRC on what went wrong with "huge" NPS project
Dame Lesley Strathie, CE of HMRC, says what went wrong with introduction of National Insurance and PAYE system
by Tony Collins
Today's report of the Public Accounts Committee includes the transcript of MPs questioning Dame Lesley Strathie, the CE and Permanent Secretary of HMRC on the failed introduction of new PAYE IT systems, the so-called National Insurance and PAYE Service (NPS).It's...
February 1, 2011 1:00 PM Read Full Post
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