How to wire the health service at a fraction of consultants’ fees alone

HAVING worked in the IT industry, I was amazed at both the cost overruns and the fact that the ‘health service computer system’ may need to be scrapped.

To add insult to injury, the taxpayer has been forced to pay €70 million to consultants, and even they couldn’t sort it.

The simple challenge was to install a system that would pay salaries and wages for 100,000 employees nationwide. This is a pretty straightforward project. The software would be a database module, requiring three to four months of programming to reflect different grades, tax scales, allowances, special payments and all the other relevant calculations needed to pay the staff.

This program would then be loaded onto a large central computer costing as much as €200,000 (including RAID storage, etc).

Then each of the regional offices with payroll staff would require computer access from their desktops, a password to get into the system and they would be able to do their weekly/monthly updates. The software would do all the calculations for them and all they would have to do is key in the correct numbers and choose the right drop down menu for each person. Even if 100 PCs were needed to achieve this nationwide, it still only amounts to €120,000.

All the information and updates from around the country would be keyed directly into the central database from the regional offices. The programmer who designed the database, and installed and tested it, might cost €200,000, plus an ongoing maintenance/upgrade contract. The whole system should cost around €500,000, but let’s round it up to €1m to reflect the chaos in the health service and cost overruns.

Now we are told that the health service agreed to pay €9m for all of this originally just six years ago - staggering. There is speculation that it may never work, which also means that it has not been working properly for six years (one lucky employee won the Lotto).

With cost overruns, the €9m has become €150m and may end up costing the taxpayer €200m before it is scrapped. For €200m, you could buy two computers each for all of the 100,000 staff in the health service and still put in a system with money to spare. The Government missed the whole point of Eddie Hobbs’s show - perhaps willingly. It’s not just the high prices but the real question - and the real scandal - is whether we are getting value for money.

John Mallon

5 Shamrock Grove

Mayfield

Cork