UK health secretary confirms end for NHS Digital, architect of the GP data grab debacle

The UK health secretary has confirmed the demise of NHS Digital and NHSX, the organisations that take various roles in NHS IT strategy and execution. In an internal email seen by The Register, Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX, said that his organisation, along with NHS Digital, would be incorporated into NHS England's Transformation …

[monty75]

Here we go again

From past experience this will result in the same people doing the same jobs at the same desks only with different headed notepaper. Half the staff will quit and come back as contractors on five times the salary. Expensive branding will be undertaken. Capita and co will make a fortune. NHS digital efforts will be same or worse.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here we go again

10 fsck up

20 rename organisation

30 got 10

In this case I expect NHSx to be called Windscale by the end of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Here we go again

'HealthScale(TM): your health, internet scale'.

'HealthScale(TM): health solutionising at web scale'.

'HealthScale(TM): not at all run by Dido Harding who is certainly not getting paid at all by us'.

'HealthScale(TM): we care about your health, but we don't have scales and are not lizards. None of these statements is true.'

'HealthScale(TM): leveraging our scales to put our digits where they should not be'.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Here we go again

Well, when 'CLAS' (CESG Listed Advisor Scheme) of the Communications-Electronics Security Group of the Government Communications Head Quarters was 'in bad odour' with HMG recently, it was completely disbanded and replaced with the National Cyber Security Centre, which, needing people skilled in protecting HMG IT assets, and finding a whole load of them unaccountably available, got them all.

But at least they moved some of the people to London.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here we go again

In a real government agency they would have just kept the old group running with the same people but no actual work to do and then created a new dept from scratch to do the work.

[Gordon 10]

Re: Here we go again

Wasn't NHSX the lifeboat of those cockwombles from the Cabinet Digital Office? I forget the name - Digital.GOV?

I wonder what they will call the new rock they crawl under?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here we go again

Cyber Metaverse Brexit Security Agency for Saving Puppies and Stopping Immigrants

[Kane]

Re: Here we go again

"Cyber Metaverse Brexit Security Agency for Saving Puppies and Stopping Immigrants"

Well, they've done a piss poor job on both fronts.

[LogicGate]

Re: Here we go again

You forgot to add "3d printed with artificial intelligence"

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here we go again

On the blockchain

[DomDF]

Re: Here we go again

It's the same story with Buckinghamshire Council, the result of a five way merger between the district and county councils, but run as if it is still five separate councils. So much for the promised cost savings and efficiency improvements by pooling staff and resources.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Here we go again

Plus a new overall management agency and 2**5 liason departments between the 5 "stakeholders"

[Greybearded old scrote]

Brands

As the second paragraph says, just branding.

Reminds me of when I worked for Auntie Beeb. Every other year the org chart was shuffled, but I was still in the same chair doing the same work with the same people. Didn't even get a new boss, so I can't link to The Who.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Brands

That happened ten or a dozen times in the thirty-odd years I was there. Don't ask about Producer Choice. Just... don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Brands

What is Producer Choice?

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Brands

If you don't know, you don't want to know.

If you do know, you still don't want to know.

[Trigonoceps occipitalis]

Re: Brands

We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

― Petronius Arbiter

[GruntyMcPugh]

Re: Brands

Same at IBM. We had name changes as geographic areas were re-ringfenced, and a manager I never interacted with as they were so many, many levels of management above was moved sideways into an exciting new opportunity while someone from a department I'd never heard of took over that re-defined role,. and,... well, nothing changed. The new manager would have a fad, we had 'Rhythm and Blues', '20/20', GDF, Lean, but they didnt actually achieve anything.Although apparently it was very important we all used the same custom made font for internal communications, because someone in marketing thought the way the message was conveyed, was more important than 'The Dept we've just onboarded is going to take months to achieve compliance so I'm going to need outages every weekend for a month, and overtime approval'. Stuff you can only say in a Sans Serif variant, apparently.

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: Brands

Same at a well-known charge card company... that'll do nicely. The changes we 'embraced', the 'partners' we 'reached out to'... but most of all, have fun! Well, I did in the end, I was made redundant and started enjoying life again.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Brands

Nothing compared to US defense industry mergers.

Went to a talk by one of the old-guard in the infrared sensor business.

Each slide had a different corporate logo in the corner, he pointed out that he had worked for all of them - while remaining in the same lab.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield

because the original name was considered to be too toxic.

[wolfetone]

Re: Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield

The funny thing being the name was the least toxic thing about the whole place.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield

In his series on the Lake District National Park and its environs, Simon Reeve will be showing the inside of the site this coming Sunday evening, 28th November, at 9:00pm on BBC 2.

[Rob Dyke]

A single FOIA mailbox...

should make it easier to not get answers from The Centre

[Eclectic Man]

Buzzword Bingo

> "people-centred, digitally-enabled, data-driven vision"

HOUSE!

[Warm Braw]

Re: Buzzword Bingo

It would be more amusing if we did not simultaneously have a shortage of 49,000 doctors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Buzzword Bingo

It takes 7 years to train a doctor* (assuming 5 years Uni & 2 as a foundationer)

But it only takes 5 minutes to hire a no-nothing graduate and charge them out at £2000 per day.

* good doctors never stop training

[Anonymous Coward]

New Post, Great Opportunity

"We are searching for a highly experienced deckchair positioner..."

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: New Post, Great Opportunity

You can't hire a deckchair positioning officer until all the logo designers and marketing people and supporting HR roles are filled.

Unfortunately after paying the recruitment consultants and non-exec directors there won't be any budget left for actual deckchair movement - but there will be a mission statement about it.

[Our Lord and Savior Rahl]

Re: New Post, Great Opportunity

"We seek to level up the NHS Digital Vision to synergise brand awareness and achieve a fusion of technology and people, turbocharging achievement to achieve our aspirational missions and realise a global Britain as we build back better"

A bit like that?

[Richard Crossley]

Re: New Post, Great Opportunity

I wouldn't have used "Turbocharging", seems 1980s to me. "Enabling" might be better.

Also "achievement to achieve", doesn't read well either.

The code reviewer in me suggests...

"We seek to level up the NHS Digital Vision to synergise brand awareness and achieve a fusion of technology and people, enhancing our ability to achieve our aspirational missions and realise a global Britain as we build back better"

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: New Post, Great Opportunity

And remove "people", people think they deserve some sort of rights and even respect.

Replace with "stakeholders"

[steelpillow]

"people-centred, digitally-enabled, data-driven vision"

Can I have wake, cloud-based and zero-carbon with that?

[pavel.petrman]

Re: "people-centred, digitally-enabled, data-driven vision"

Obligatory XKCD, namely the part about the carbon neutral servers.

[JohnMurray]

Sure..

More distraction.

Having one large organisation in charge of digital et-al, will mean it should be no problem selling patient records and covering it up.

[Timbo]

Re: Sure..

I'm pretty sure some big American Health corporations (and their lobbyist friends within the Tory party) might be behind this scheme, making it simpler for them to scoop up UK Health Data more easily...

[Infi 1]

NHS Digital:

'Let's hire more managers that know fsuk all about IT and let them make decisions on the infrastructure. Ooh, shiny!'

[CrazyOldCatMan]

let them make decisions on the infrastructure. Ooh, shiny!

Many many years ago I worked for a small company that had an application deployed in the NHS. At one point, the DoH wondered whether we could move over to using the NHS Spine as authentication instead of our smartcard so we had a series of meetings with the NHS Spine people.

At no point in those meetings did we get to speak to anyone technical. And, using the documentation provided, we estimated that doing so would quadruple the size of our application and make it hugely less reliable so we stuck to using our smartcards.

Of course, it eventually all came to an end - the DoH set up an 'advisory committee' to evaluate the use of our application and, surprise surprise, several members were from our huge competitor and the committee eventually recommended that our functionality get folded into their application and ours be discontinued - much to the displeasure to the NHS staff that actually used our application.

Corrupt? I couldn't possibly comment.

[Eclectic Man]

The NHS SPINE authentication was originally designed, and intended, to be done locally (hence the PKI). However, when the NHS higher-ups were told about this, and the, inevitable but small costs of each practice, PCT etc. running their own authentication server, they insisted that authentication be done centrally.

This resulted in the enormous delays for NHS staff logging on to the system, and their practice of just leaving the card in the reader to avoid the 90second wait. Incidentally, originally as implemented (many years ago and it has been fixed now) any one of the thousands of KMtaj agegakuh sseinf inf* could delete everyone's access privileges, including their own, thereby shutting down the whole of the NHS!

*Now, now, you didn't expect me to actually say who could do it, did you? ;o) (But, actually, yes, they could have.)

[Doctor Syntax]

"The NHSX and NHS Digital brands will both be retired"

Those few words, unintentionally, tell us so much about so many things that are wrong in the DoH.

[itbod]

I didn't realise NHS Digital and NHSX were just for England, thought they would have covered Scotland Wales and NI.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have noticed this sometimes on the TV news broadcasts about Covid. "The latest change to the red/amber/green status only applies in England. Viewers elsewhere have their own programme."

People in England don't have to wear masks on public transport. They do in Scotland. Which makes things entertaining when choo-choos cross the border.

[Anne Hunny Mouse]

Health is devolved to Welsh Assembly and Scottish Governments, hence only England.

[mercyground]

Another Tory Coverup.

So now having blown their chance to sell all our NHS data they have decided that the old names are too scandel ridden and are now "ReBranding" for their next attempt to sell our medical data to their pondscum friends.

I have ZERO problem with the NHS using medical data to improve the NHS and medical care. We already do large scale trials. Being able to use the entire NHS dataset to find hotspots, issues etc would improve things.

I have a Farkton of issues with tory friends selling it to their pals for abuse. No No NO and FUCK No.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Another Tory Coverup.

And the problem is that having done it once nobody is ever going to trust them again.

[s. pam]

All monies to the consultants, nothing for the patients

B’locks to yet another clusterflock courtesy of the government boffins who can’t share my damn hospital records in Berkshire to my GP in south Buckinghamshire. I had to copy pages of records and email to my GP surgery or they’d have nary a clue why/what was done for the 10 days I was on ward at Wexham Park.

In the end yet again the taxpayers get screwed for billions and the luvvies will laugh all the way to Monte Carlo

/past/epic/fail

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: All monies to the consultants, nothing for the patients

You don't need notes. Medical staff make it a point of honour not to read them when assessing or caring for a patient. I guess it would be cheating, or something.

Yes, BTDT.

[midgepad]

Which failure-mode did we toggle into this time?

It will become clear soon I symplectic. This foes seem familiar in general.

[Anonymous Coward]

It can only get better from here

Cheer up! That well-known master of IT and organisational success Dildo Harding will be brought in to oversee this restructuring.

[Richard Crossley]

Re: It can only get better from here

I hope not but it's inevitable. A Government IT department needs a clueless cockwomble as a leader and I can't of anyone more qualified the HMG IT Superstar than Dido Harding

[Jonathon Green]

Translation: There’s been too much negative stuff in the media with those names associated so we’re relaunching the same policies under a different brand with the cover sheets rewritten by a different PR agency and the leadership’s job titles changed.

[codejunky]

Shocked

A reduction in departments yet more money spaffed. I look forward to cuts and austerity actually meaning spending less money.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Shocked

A reduction in departments yet more money spaffed

It's happened before - some minister announced from the dispatch box that they were going to reduce headcount at the DoH.

Their solution? Spin out loads of staff to some new organisations (NHS Employers being one of them). There were a number of issues with this:

1. Their pay and benefits still came out of the DoH budget.

2. Because they were no longer DoH staff, they had no authority to actually mandate how their budget was spent but could only recommend to the DoH.

3. The DoH therefore had to grab new staff to evaluate the recommendations (and also to mostly replace the people who had been transferred since their job-role still needed to be done).

So the end result was that the DoH budget grew, staff became duplicated between the two organisations and people who formerly had a job role to actually *do* something became a set of advisors. All so that some pompous minister could stand up in Parliament and boast how they had cut the DoH headcount (at that point in time anyway - luckily he didn't have to say it again 2 years later).

Bah. Politics.

[Anonymous Coward]

the movement of staff to the new organisation

Aaand this is why the new organisation will be just as ineffective.

[ICL1900-G3]

Jesus wept

Where did these people learn to speak English?!