Yet another major government computer project has failed; This time it’s the new NHS bookings system. The NHS are one of the UK government’s most IT literate departments, but as we can see, even relatively simple implementation and integration projects have a tendency to fail.
When I say “relatively” I mean relative to Blunkett and Clarke’s legacy – the National ID card system. This mother of all databases will need to be integrated into every single public-facing government office including all public transport infrastructure, health services, public libraries and pretty much any location where citizen and government meet.
Unlike previous IT failures which only had to deal with a small subset of our population (e.g. Single mums, pensioners or patients, people in ambulances), the National ID card will need to deal with the entire adult population of the country. That means it will be many orders of magnitude harder to implement than any IT project our nation has ever conceived. The latest estimates from the London School of Economics put the total cost of the system of the ID card system at £18 Billion, which allegedly corresponds to an unsubsidized cost of more than £100 per citizen.
Practically speaking, we might argue that there is no real danger of a civil rights abuse resulting from the ID card system because there is no way that this or any other government will be able to deliver the system as proposed. We cannot afford it, and the public sector lacks the skills needed to manage a project of this scale. If it is built, it will fail. The cost of failure will be substantially greater than any theoretical savings we might make by using an ID card to reduce fraud.
If a smaller project like that NHS Bookings system system cannot be delivered on budget or on time, what hope do the government have of delivering anything more substantial?
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