The 31 reviews of the NHS National Programme for IT, published by the OGC after a Freedom of Information request, included nine with red ratings, indicating the relevant projects required immediate action to achieve success.
The Conservative Party said that one of the reports from June 2005 praised relationships with Accenture as "proven and robust and capable of delivering future success," but that Accenture withdrew from NPfIT in October 2006. Another, from August 2005, said that Choose and Book's target of being used to book 90% of hospital appointments by December 2006 was "still achievable" if deployment issues were resolved, but in 2009 the system the system is used for just over 50% of bookings.
"These reviews expose Labour's incompetence over the NHS IT system. It's incredible that, right from the beginning, the government should have ignored these repeated warnings about problems," said Stephen O'Brien.
"They also raise serious questions about the level of scrutiny the Office of Government Commerce is providing. The government urgently needs to get the NHS IT programme back on track before any more precious NHS resources are wasted."
The Conservative Party said the government ignored warnings raised by the review on areas, including: risky procurement; no identification of costs, benefits or value for money; a failure to engage front line practitioners; lack of qualified staff in government; a negative impact on small UK software firms; excessive secrecy; unrealistic timetables; and poor supplier performance.
"The review is accurate, but it is important to note that it covers the period between 2002 and 2007, and many achievements have been made since then," said Victor Almeida, Kable's senior health analyst. "This is not to say that there are no concerns around the Care Record Service, which could be subject of a major overhaul later this year, if no major improvements are made by November."
O'Brien also said that the OGC has withheld six Gateway Reviews published since 2006, the most recent of which was completed in February.
The OGC claimed it was justified in holding back three reviews, although there is a discrepancy between this and the six cited by the Conservatives.
"In accordance with the FoI legislation OGC considered each request on a case by case basis," said an OGC spokesperson. "For 31 of the reports OGC decided that the public interest favoured disclosure, but for the three remaining reports OGC decided, in line with the Ministry of Justice Working Assumption, that the public interest favoured non disclosure of the majority of information.
"This is supported by comments made at an earlier Information Tribunal where the Tribunal stated that it did not believe all Gateway reports should be released," the OGC added.
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