Gateway Review Recommends ICRS be put on Hold

The latest Office of Government Commerce (OGC) review of the business case for Integrated Care Records Service (ICRS), the central component of the National NHS IT Programme, is reported to have recommended that the project be put on hold.

E-Health Insider understands from industry sources that the latest OGC Gateway Review, Gate One, identified major concerns about the management capacity required for the programme and the implementation capabilities underpinning the project.

The high-level review team is reported to have raised serious concerns about the achievability of the ICRS programme as currently configured. According to anonymous, but well placed industry sources, the review team’s overall conclusion was that the project is not yet ready to proceed.

Specific recommendations made by the OGC review team are thought to include: revisiting the resources available; re-examining the sequencing of the ICRS project; and rethinking the overall project plan.

One of the central criticisms of the latest Gateway review is thought to be that the problems identified at the Gateway Zero strategic review had not been addressed. The initial Gateway review carried out this summer was reported to have generated a record number of ‘comments’, but the national programme had sufficient political impetus behind it to proceed.

While Gateway Zero focuses on the high-level business case, Gateway One is based on producing a justification for the project based on business needs and an assessment of the project’s likely costs and potential for success.

These are followed by Gateway Two, which focuses on procurement method and source of supply, while Gateway Three focuses on the investment decision. In October health minister Hazel Blears said that all the gateway reviews for the separate components of the national programme would be completed by Spring 2003.

EHI was unable to confirm from the OGC, an agency of the Treasury, whether the ICRS programme had passed, completed or to even whether it had taken place.

As we reported last week, the OGC review process is shrouded in secrecy, which is deemed vital to encourage a free and open exchange of ideas. According to the accounts reaching EHI this has certainly been successful in the case of the latest review.

In the very strictest sense of the word the review has probably not actually failed. Health minister Hazel Blear recently explained in response to a Parliamentary Question that "The gateway review process is not an audit and the key stages of the review process are not in a strict sense, pass or fail."

However, it is very difficult to see how the ICRS component of the national NHS IT programme can proceed to the next stage of the Gateway Review process without some radical reconstructive surgery – and this will take valuable time.

The OGC’s Gateway Review process was set up to examine major government IT projects at critical stages to provide assurance that they can progress successfully to the next stage.

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