Comments on: Capita to take over NHS Choices

By: Ossie Jesson

Ossie Jesson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:45:05 +0000

I went to the wordcampuk at Birmingham this weekend
I am new to blogging and web communites (HI everyone }
I was nearly the oldest there , but not quite
I am not a very clever chappie but i would guesstimate that some of the quys and girls that attended the weekend could undercut that £60 million by just smmidgillion or two
Someone please let the smart people have a go now
don,t let them keep doing yesterday all over again

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:05:57 +0000

Indeed James, it's a conclusion I've reluctantly reached myself in the last couple of years. Unless, that is, government gets markedly better at building sites - and I wouldn't entirely rule that out. But I fear it'll shift the cultural question from one part of the organisation (the IT dept) to another. Statisticians don't like the idea of other people doing nasty things - or in my experience, anything - with their datasets.

By: James

James — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:06:14 +0000

Yes, you could probably build quite a nice website for £80m. But should you? (Or rather, should they?).

The Power of Information blog (run by the Cabinet Office) helpfully noted a new paper from the US suggesting that governments should build public data services before they build websites (which get old very fast).

More here:
http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/blog/post/2008/07/Should-the-government-build-web-sites.aspx

By: Becky

Becky — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:55:11 +0000

Wow , I met with some people from Dr Foster a few weeks ago and they were pretty certain they would continue so this must be a bit of a shock.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:48:40 +0000

I've been in touch with a few people connected to NHS Choices today, none of whom wanted to go on the record. I'm told the official line is: the show goes on as normal. The day-to-day stuff still needs doing, and the development roadmap goes well into next year. But with staff receiving formal TUPE notification today, it's inevitable that minds should wander a bit.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:35:29 +0000

No getting away from it... £60m is a lot of money. I don't really need to say that, do I. Some context, courtesy of TheyWorkForYou. NHS Choices annual budget this year: £38 million. Total unique visitors: pushing past the 1 million per month mark. That's 40% of the equivalent figure for NHS Direct.

By: OK, enough is enough « Mindworks’ Weblog

OK, enough is enough « Mindworks’ Weblog — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:33:54 +0000

[...] enough is enough Posted July 17, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | How do we stop this insanity? Hopefully our dear leader will make one of his famous early morning calls to whoever it was that [...]

By: Andrew Cooper

Andrew Cooper — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:16:46 +0000

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Did you just say '£60 million plus contract to run a website' or did I misread you? Please tell me it isn't true.

http://mindworksblog.com/2008/07/09/only-connect/