Post to The Register
Good practice in BRITISH trusts is trashed
The main problem has always been that each trust had it's own private systems and did not talk to any others doing the same thing. Not just the NHS but across all public services. Today we are seeing the good trusts now being forced to an American straight jacket which is preventing them from their own progress plans ... which SHOULD have included rolling out the good stuff to all trusts. Open source gets a bad press at times but it's key element is sharing knowledge, and if all the existing IT departments got their acts together and started to share then we would not need some proprietary third party system, and perhaps ALL of this information could be managed on totally UK based services.
Licence free database systems with no limits on number of users and the like and open standards as to just what information packets are used along with proper security on just what level of information is permitted in a package, duplicated across multiple sites without the straight jacket of some proprietary third party 'cloud supplier' ... the whole point of the cloud originally was that anybody could connect with anybody not be restricted to other machines on the same mega monopoly supplier.
Context
For many years I produced systems for agencies like the benefits agency (does that even exist today?) and the railways. The initial system was a simple display system which a then client was looking to supply in exchange for interlacing information with advertising. This was the 80's. That client set up a meeting with the director of the South West Area of the BA and I presented the system to him. There was some interest but it quickly became obvious that the the 'information' that he wanted to display was not readily available. To cut to the chase, I ended up provided a latter demonstration of a caller management system which monitored and displayed waiting times and in addition called customers to the relevant desk or room when their turn finally arrived. One has to remember that back then we were talking about waiting times in the hours as there were no other computers in the office. Each enquiry involved searching through cards and paperwork! The CMS system was not even allowed to record names of those customers, which soon presented other problem and once names were attached to the tickets a lot of time could be saved by being able to link back to previous visits. The fraud department also helped enabling this for obvious reasons.
The system was taken up by a large number of SWA BA's as the 'waiting time' reports it produced were requirements imposed by the government of the time. Initially there was a lot of suspicion of the system since BA employees had never had to use any electronic devices, but we developed a practice of working with staff to improve and add features that soon made them feel part of the process. So much so that when a system went down they were a little lost, something that thankfully was not a common problem and most of the time was fix with just a phone call.
As more features were added to the system, the cooperation between the users and development team also evolved. We reached a point were we would have annual user group meetings to discuss what was needed for the next year. These turned into as much a discussion group between different offices and how they handled a problem. Sharing good practice was integral to the process and rather than the normal software practice of charging each client for their own 'improvements', we agreed a plan that ALL could use and it was simply part of the annual maintenance process. The original hardware was slowly extended by the use of web based pages on the computers that were now appearing in the offices, and the whole lot evolved under a common base.
So why is the system no longer being used? That started when the government sold off the BA offices and started renting them back to 'save money'. Because the caller system at this stage also handled CCTV cameras, panic alarm and other 'office related services' it was not part of the IT system. The new caretakers had no interest in even maintaining this aspect of the office services. A number of the older managers made a case to pay for the systems themselves, and many of these were still working until Covid hit and the 'in person' services were curtailed. Today very few of those drop in centres even exist. Added to the fun of cause was the move from XP to W7 which, since the older hardware had run up to 60 odd terminal devices from a single windows computer, that computer became part of back room deals on extortionate licences for the 'new' version of windows, often with 'free' copies of windows tools that simply did not provide even the initial ticket printer! Again offices who appreciated the saving the CMS system provided them simply carried on paying out of their own budgets, but other sites were simply not allowed to.
The last remaining system was installed at Wyre Forest District Council in Kidderminster but was taken out of service when the decision was made not to reopen the drop-in office at all. The original system had been moved between three different sites over the years and had evolved to serve needs that the more central 'Worcester Hub' services simply did not supply. For those in the know, 'Postfield' as the system was always called despite that company being sold off, was always popular with users and we continued to evolve it under the maintenance only model until the end.