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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES BY DEPUTY R.G. LE HÉRISSIER OF ST. SAVIOUR
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 15th JANUARY 2008
Question
"Would the Minister confirm how much money has been spent to date on the Integrated Care Record project, outline what amount of money, as a sum and as a percentage of the project's budget, has been paid to consultants and advise when the project will be activated?"
Answer
The Integrated Care Record project (ICR) is the name given to the programme of work which will replace HSSD's ageing and failing computer system and make the Department's information and communication technology fit for the future. While there has been a year on year deterioration with the technology as it falls further and further behind what is required for modern medicine, there is a very potent and tangible short term threat, namely that the Department's current software supplier is in the process of exiting the health information computer technology market. There is a danger, therefore, that the plug is pulled' both literally and metaphorically. This threat was not lost on the Council of Ministers which made the funds available in 2006.
As with all large and complex capital projects, a detailed project management approach has been taken, which includes clear lines of accountability, the creation and maintenance of risk registers, and a structure of working groups which report through to the ICR Programme Board which is chaired by the Chief Officer of Health and Social Services. In addition to technologists, managers and consultants, the Programme Board also includes the Director of Strategic Purchasing for the States of Jersey and the Director of Information Services for the States of Jersey. The project has been advised also – on a very specific aspect of the work – by the Controller Auditor General.
The project has been designed in such a way that it has a budget of £12m which is to be released in tranches of £4m in 2007, £3m in 2008, £3m in 2009 and £2m in 2010.
It is not the policy of HSSD to employ general management consultants'. The consultants involved in the project are highly specialised from the fields of procurement, health technologies, and the law (particularly contractual law). In this regard – as at 31 December 2007 - £643,440 has been spent on this specialist advice. This represents 5.4% of the £12m budget sum. Learning from the experience of other procurers of major ICT systems, the deployment of these specialist consultancies has been front loaded' to the beginning of the project and therefore the plan is that there will be a phased reduction in reliance upon them as the project comes to fruition.
In the States of Jersey, large building projects are normally budgeted with 20% of the capital sum being deployed for external advice, which includes architects and fees. In complex ICT projects, the Society of Computer and Information Technology Management (SOCITM) provides a benchmark of between 8% to 10% of the cost of a complex ICT procurement as being deployed on specialist advice.
The project will be implemented in a phased way as the above phasing of tranches of investment makes clear. The first tranches of investment in 2007 and 2008 are to protect against the risk of reliance upon EDS (the current service provider of the ageing H&SS computer systems) who are looking to exit the market at the end of 2008. However, in another sense, investment will be a continuous process as the technology matures, as software upgrades are made available, and as the boundary between medical technology (such as a Magnetic Resonance Imager) and information computer technology becomes increasingly blurred.