By Nick Heath, 26 June 2008 10:35
NEWS
Fujitsu Service's £896m NHS IT contract was terminated because of its inability to deliver "key milestones", the government has claimed.
Health minister Ben Bradshaw said Fujitsu was unable to fulfil vital elements of its "core contract" to provide part of the £12.7bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
In a written answer to Parliament he disclosed the project suffered from far deeper problems than previously revealed.
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He said Fujitsu "failed to meet key contractual milestones in the core contract and failed to provide an acceptable remediation plan".
Bradshaw said talks had been going on since last summer with the vendor responsible for delivering the electronic care records system in the south of England.
Fujitsu has previously said the sticking point in these negotiations for a contract reset were disagreements over attempts to tailor the one-size-fits-all system to local health trust needs but Bradshaw said there were wider problems.
He said talks also focused on the need to "address areas of poor product and delivery volumes with the aim of resetting the contract to resolve these difficulties".
Bradshaw said the consequences of the termination were not yet clear but said they were expected to be "minimal".
Fujitsu declined to comment.
It recently emerged that Fujitsu has until the end of June to pay back £67m out of the £143m it received from the NHS in advance payments.
BT is thought to be the frontrunner to take over the eight sites that Fujitsu had been responsible for.
Comments
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1. Karen Challinor
so a contract was agreed and signed by all parties that
heres my idea for what standard project terms should contain and define
- a clear definition of what the project is to achieve so that anyone reading it will know immediately if the project deviates
- resources the contractee has to provide with appropriate compensations for the contractor if they are not met
- initial payment, large enough to get the project going, small enough to be written off should the contractor fail to deliver
- payment at each milestone with a reduction of that amount for each period the milestone slips and points at which the contractor will have failed to deliver allowing legal action
further each milestone should leave the system in a usable state so that even if the project fails the investment is not lost as it can be rolled back to the last milestone
from what I can see the NHS contract with Fujitsu pretty much missed every one of these points
I've probably oversimplified and missed a few points, but this is off the top of my head while I drink my coffee and it still yields a better contract than the one that was agreed
2. anonymous
I worked on the contract and the main faling was NPfIT trying to foist onto all the Trusts software the first saw working at Newnham and Homiton. It became obvious at the first few roll-outs that no other Trust wanted "one-size fits all" - instead the supplier had to then literally process 100's of CRs - before they got paid!
Either NPfIT needed more muscle or they should have owned up and paid more.
They are just trying to make Fujitsu a scapegoat for their own failings.
It sound similar to blaming a junior HM R&C person for a security lapse - only to own up to not having any security to lapse!