From: Joseph Dal Molin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, 26 October 2004 11:03 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: NHS/IA revisionism > > Adrian Midgley and I had the pleasure of briefing the NHS IA > executive > team on the open source value proposition for health systems > back in the > late part of 2000. One of the outcomes was the sponsoring of > the 2001 > OSHCA meeting in London... thanks to the followup and persistance of > Colin Smith. In the fall of 2001 Nigel Bell, the then CEO of > the NHS IA > gave the following interview: > > http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/news/1125702 > > It may be valuable to document all the bits and pieces, > especially given > the risk of the billion pound effort to "boil the ocean" from > above....
Richard Grainger, the head of the NHS IA, spoke at a seminar that I attended in Melbourne about 6 months ago. I asked him about open source, and his response was that he had no objections, provided there were open source organisations who could tender and then deliver on projects with 18 month delivery schedules and budgets of several hundred million pounds. That's not 18 months to develop software, that's 18 months to customise software, install it, train everyone, do post-implementation reviews etc etc. One got the impression that, armed with the 6 billion pound budgetary promise from Tony Blair, he felt that he could, if not boil the ocean, at least part the sea - that is, exert a great deal of influence on and be able to extract much, much better deals out of existing commercial vendors and system integrators. I'm not quite sure how it is all shaping up, but I gather there have been many complaints from small-to-medium-sized informatics organisations that they have been shut right out, by the sheer scale of the contracts being offered. That probably means that open source won't get a much of a look in. Adrian, is that a correct surmise? Tim C
