Health service’s €450,000 website still awaiting launch

THE Health Service Executive has spent €450,000 on a website that it has yet to launch, even though the organisation is three years old.

Last year it spent €258,000 out of a total expenditure of €450,000 on a new internet programme.

Despite first indicating it would be ready to launch the website in early 2007, so far it has not published its new version on the web.

A spokesman for the HSE said the site is now in its final stages and will be put through testing in private at the beginning of this year.

He defended the time taken so far and said the eventual project will see a completely new internal computer-based communication system for the 130,000-strong workforce.

“The project has taken approximately 18 months to launch, a timeframe not unusual for a project of this magnitude.

“The benefits of developing accessible, consistent and up-to-date information for a client base of over four million necessitates significant planning, and in terms of content a huge effort in gathering and checking vast quantities of data,” he said.

The HSE signed a tender contract in early 2006 with Dublin-based IT development company Parallel.

The project involves the development of the website and an intranet service to handle internal communication and join up the old systems for the 11 health board regions. The HSE spokesman said a lot of the money spent so far has been on technical costs rather than labour.

“A large portion of this outlay was used to cover the costs of the necessary software and hardware required to build a web infrastructure that can be used for all HSE web services,” he said.

“The expenditure also went towards development of this bespoke [custom-built] system, training, software licences and security.

“In addition a huge amount of the development and management work has been handled in- house at no additional cost.

“Ongoing training for staff content editors is also wholly provided internally by the HSE.”

The basic website currently operated by the HSE is updated and maintained by a number of different departments, with overall responsibility given to its national communications’ unit.

However, development of this site has been stalled while the new version’s completion is awaited.

“In terms of maintenance, information like press releases, publications, parliamentary questions are kept up-to-date but no major development of this site has been undertaken in this year as work is progressed on its replacement,” said the spokesman.

The current website has links to content from the north-eastern region but not from anywhere else in the country.