… and I think it’s safe to say that health and social care has experienced probably the most tumultuous year in a long, long time. The shakeup of the NHS has created a lot of stirring and excitement, but mostly we are none the wiser on what the final structure will look like and where responsibilities lie.

Yesterday two important papers were produced by DH, one confirmed that it will be full steam ahead for ‘Liberating the NHS’ and the other said that the centre will tighten control over the budget for 2011/12. A very interesting dichotomy that Paul Corrigan has already emphasized and reiterated at the Intellect Healthcare Christmas Lunch yesterday:

“The Government, when dealing with the hypothesis of how the NHS might operate in the future, argue for liberation and the removal of their interventions from the NHS. However the Government, when dealing with a real live NHS issue – next year’s budget, believe strongly in central control and intervention. This would lead us to believe that they are ideologically in favour of liberation but practically in favour of intervention.”

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Technorati Tags: and everything else, central government, DH, efficiency, ICT, liberating the NHS, NHS

Most of the direct references to ICT in central government can be found in the Cabinet Office business plan. The departmental plans contain some interesting bits, but most of the big bits have been announced previously in the Spending Review, such as HMRC’s plan to invest £900m in recovering additional tax revenue and DWP’s plans for universal credit. The following observations therefore focus on the Cabinet Office plan.

Increased delivery of services online now seems to be enshrined with the commitment to mandate channel shift (1.13.ii). The dual levers of central mandation and departmental budget cuts will likely help accelerate this move. In addition (while it has long been known that online service delivery is vastly cheaper than via other channels) the ‘input indicator’ to publish every department’s cost per citizen transaction on the internet, phone and in person should help give this even greater momentum. (more…)

Technorati Tags: business plan, central government, efficiency, ICT, Obama, procurement