By Nick Heath, 18 September 2008 16:52
NEWS
The NHS has warned hundreds of thousands of staff that it has been forced to push back an email upgrade to next year.
At least 300,000 staff at surgeries and hospitals nationwide have been told the highly anticipated upgrade will be delayed.
Due to start at the end of this month, the move from Mirapoint to Microsoft Exchange 2007 will mean NHS staff can access new features, including the ability to wirelessly synch mobile devices to access emails on the go.
In a letter to staff, Will Moss, programme head for the affected internal email system, NHSmail, says the start date has been delayed from 27 September because the organisation cannot yet guarantee the new service will match the standard of the existing system.
Doctors' union the British Medical Association (BMA) expressed dismay at the delay of another project by NHS IT body Connecting for Health but added it was important the upgrade was carried out with the minimum of disruption.
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Moss writes: "We have identified that some components require further testing and improvement to give us the assurance that the whole service will meet or exceed the current levels of performance.
"This additional performance and scalability testing will mean a deferral to the previously announced schedule.
"We believe that undergoing further testing is a prudent step to minimise risk, giving us and NHSmail users the confidence that the new service is absolutely robust and reliable."
A spokesman for the BMA said: "It is disappointing that another Connecting for Health project has been hit by delay although it is important that the migration is got right to avoid any disruption to service.
"We hope that when the migration is complete it will provide an improved, reliable and secure service for NHS staff."
Contractor Cable & Wireless is now scheduled to begin the work on 9 January 2009.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Davies
I would have thought that any components that required 'extra' testing would have been identified before hand and then included in the original project schedule.
Also, when putting timescales together for projects like this I thought that you always added a little extra time in your plans to deal with the 'unexpected'...especially when dealing with public sector IT projects which are renowned for being over-budget and late!
Does this not mean then that they got something wrong in the planning stage?
2. anonymous
Yet again beggaring belief.
The NHS should just STOP EVERYTHING NOW, and probably oursource the whole lot to Google.
- Free NHS GMail
- Free Google Health (already interfaced to hospitals and providers in the USA already)
Link to Google health if you are interested
3. Chris Nowak
Well, well.
IT delays in the NHS.
Shock, horror. Now there's a novelty...
4. Fed-up of the MS BS
Bhaa more sheep following M$ & Exchange
5. Chris Nowak
Plus ca change...