Multifunction Catch-up Post.

The same can be said of heroin addiction

Oops - wrong thread.

Most of the people here come into that category - however in my day to
day job I have the wonderful position of having to persuade some people
in the NHS to actually do something.

I hate them immediately.

Phil

 

A contact, yeah.

Actually, I think there are for the "personal protection loons" who'll
collect you from Baghdad airport and take you to your hotel, etc. And
there are, after a fashion, for the military comms guys that I deal
with

I'll keep my eyes open.

 

That depends on whether you are talking to the techies or not.

And by 2006 it will be 2008..

Given that the N3 NHS Net rollout is at least 18 months behind schedule
I would be amazed if it was sorted in this decade. Part of the problem
is the increasing decentralisation - no-one at the DoH or NHS Employers
actually seems to have the ability to mandate anything to the Trusts -
which is why every Trust has spent the minimum possible on IT
infrastructure and systems and seems quite happy to muddle along doing
3 times the work that they need to. And even within Trusts - hospitals
seem to be free to use whichever IT systems they feel like with no
thought about data exchange or interoperability.

All of which makes rolling out a national (ie English in this case and
soon to be Wales) Occupational Health recording and monitoring system
rather frustrating.

Phil.

 

I thought Charlie Dimmock looked like someone I knew.

 

Get real for a moment.

 

That's about the sum of it. I wouldn't ask this lot to run a bath.

 

?

 

Which national solution are you involved in Phil? There are so many...

 

No, I'm merely a data monkey in this regard. I filled all my forms,
generated all my procedures, ticked all my boxes, by Thursday, as
agreed, then went to an update meeting on Friday, to be told that:

a: the test environment isn't ready to be built yet. [1]
b: there's no overall UAT plan in place. (ours/mine is)
c: we have to defer a month, rather than a fortnight, because of an
unscheduled building powerdown, followed by Easter weekend.
d: the existing live application doesn't work properly, either.

Until Friday, no-one at the business end (aiw) knew of any problems
from the system end.

Project sponsor went suitably ballistic.

Apart from that, it's all hunky dory.

Conclusion? None of it's my fault, so I don't much care.

[1] Whatever that means.

 

<chortle>

I had a brief discussion with an IT project manager chap today who's
implemented a pretty sensible and yet simple system for recording
incident information. The poor guy has only worked with LU for 9 months
and he had some fairly scathing remarks to make about management
decisions and their demotivating effects. I could only agree with him
given that over 50% of my work at present is trying to stop other people
making dim witted decisions that will cost us a fortune. I'd love to do
some real work once in a while instead of the commercial equivalent of
wet nursing people. Still I have the deep joy of talking to the "review
team" tomorrow to explain what I do in my job and how I do it.

 

That doesn't narrow it down much ;-)

 

There's been three separate things show up today, each in the "wish-list on
the back of an envelope" stage of development, none of which had any sort of
approved budget, and all of which had go-live dates this side of Easter. I
remained polite and professional: nonetheless, there are sadder and slightly
wiser people out there tonight.

 

I'm .. "special".

We had a couple of gun battles in the street the other week, but no
it's not technically a war zone. We're only 45 minutes from Iraq,
though, which is where half of my staff are located.

Yeah, course. There's limited stuff available for non-septics, but
bear you in mind (no pun, etc).

Actually, we're quite tightly restricted. Non-Kuwaitis in Kuwait
aren't allowed guns. Or maybe aren't allowed guns in public, or
summat. Anyway, non-squaddies aren't allowed guns on base. And that
pretty much covers all angles.

 

Something like that, yes. Basically they need it, they need it right
now and it needs to work. If it's not perfect, well, okay, we'll
tackle that later, but they must have it. Now.

 

Occupational Health Smart Card scheme - so that doctors medical
clearance (ie proof that they have been immunised against all sorts of
stuff and that the immunisations have worked) can be recorded
nationally.

Especially important for junior doctors who move from Trust to Trust
every 3 months or so and (at the moment) have to be retested each time
because Trusts don't share paperwork..

Phil

 

"Fast, cheap, good. Pick any two"

Phil

 

Bear wrote

And you wonder why you are not considered a "Real Biker"

 

Heh, I've got one of those going on in my team too, except the support
team are in a different European country to the servers, and the
customer, plus the infrastructure to put the servers onto doesn't exist
yet... this all got sprung on me a week ago, with a March go live.

It helps to always remember, "It's only some computers and stuff".

 

It's not just .gov a lot of contracts I'm seeing from the private
sector now dictate "you will do X by this date".

The date is almost always unrealistic.