You'd have told them they should have used Apple/Google app model, right? NHSX seeks willing humans to fill health tech and data roles

England's NHS has advertised for two top tech jobs as the service struggles with an ongoing pandemic, a supposed digital transformation, and imminent central government reform. For a salary of £93,000, two individuals will be charged with leading technology and data policy in the NHS's digital agency, NHSX. The director of …

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's a large sum of money by anyone's measure, but £93k to lead a team of 125, establishing and implementing data/information policy for a health system that touches 70 million lives and wields a £120Bn budget? That strikes me as _very_ low for the amount of political wrangling and personal exposure you'll have.

[Kane]

"That strikes me as _very_ low for the amount of political wrangling and personal exposure you'll have."

Agreed, this sounds more like a bunch of dummy positions so that gov.uk has something to beat up after a bunch of shit comes out in the wash, post release of that so called Data Strategy.

Plus, I imagine the heat is on a bit after Dido Harding Twat Twat took a hit in the recent Public Accounts Committee.

Can't have one of their own being so thoroughly embarrassed in the public eye, what?

[BigAndos]

Yeah seems like a director level position that I would expect to be well into six figures. Where I work senior developers can get fairly close to £90k.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: a large sum of money by anyone's measure

I think Dido Harding would consider that as pocket change.

And she has failed much harder than that.

[Gordon 10]

I'd want at least double that

On the off chance of running into Dildo.

Not that I have much confidence that she's actually been in the vicinity as the coal face - let alone seen it.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: I'd want at least double that

You'd be more likely to run into her if you were a horse.

[Warm Braw]

Not a great start...

The candidate information pack quotes this as the link to information about the required vetting process:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/security-%20vetting-and-clearance

Note the intrusive space. If you correct that, the link goes to a page saying the guidance was withdrawn in March 2020...

More substantively, the Director of Data Policy role includes:

Delivering and ensuring maximum possible benefit from the NHS AI Lab, a £250m programme as part of the Government’s mission on artificial intelligence. The lab is a Government Major Projects Portfolio(GMPP) level programme tasked with accelerating AI-based companies, building technical capability within the NHS, and ensuring appropriate regulatory frameworks

Not sure that I'm entirely comfortable with a senior civil servant in charge of our health records having the explicit goal of using that data to "accelerate" private AI companies, "regulatory frameworks" notwithstanding.

[x 7]

Just close it

.......and save the money

Just pointless duplication of existing resources

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Just close it

Spoilsport! We need quangos to justify budgets but also to blame when things go wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just close it

NHSX are not a Quango. Far worse. They report directly to the Secretary of State, so by all rights should be a civil service department, but instead live in a legal grey area with a "CEO" rather than a permanent secretary or director general, and are funded out of the budgets of the Department of Health and NHS England, so exist without parliamentary oversight.

This also means, crucially, that despite the name they actually have very little to do with the NHS proper - the same applies to a lesser extent to NHS England. This is another good reason to not take a job with them; it's all politics and no knickers.

[Oh Matron!]

Re: Just close it

Raab. Does anyone else taste bile when his name is heard?

Salary would have to be 10x that to work with........ What am I saying: There's not enough money in the world.....

[old_nic]

Perhaps the same person should be put in charge of the contract to Track and Trace, based in their headquarters in the Cayman Islands. Then they can be paid out of that part of the budget, and it will still leave £21,999,907,000 in the petty cash.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again

The vaccination programme has shown that when the NHS is left to get on with things it can actually do a damn good job of organising and delivering.

Contrast that with all the disasters and moneypits that the privatisation hawks have made out of C19 (PPE, Track and Trace, etc etc).

So of course the way to 'Protect The NHS' is to get yet more wannabee Dido Hardings involved to suck up the money, deliver nothing but increased fragmentation and chaos, and in 12 months time p off to the next stop on the gravy train.

Thus a little more of the organisational and structural integrity of the NHS is eroded ready for selling off to Johnson's cronies and school chums.

AC as NHS

[Anonymous Coward]

Ex-NHS here. I came to the comments to deliver a general booting to NHSX, and a particular booting to these jobs and the sorts of people who get them.

But everything I was going to say has already been said by other commentards. So I’ll just deliver a few +1 upvotes instead.

[EnviableOne]

Please stop refering to NHSX as part of the NHS

Its not

the NHS's digital agency is NHS Digital,

NHSX is a quango set up by App Cockup and his friends at DHSC and basically spends all the money for actual digital projects without producing anything useful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Please stop refering to NHSX as part of the NHS

Quango: NHSX is neither quasi-autonomous nor non-governmental.