Richard Granger, the chief executive of Connecting for Health, the over-budget NHS IT project, has said he will leave his post in October.

Anger as best paid civil servant goes - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Britain's best-paid civil servant is to quit as the head of NHS information technology, claiming the new, accident-prone computer system is on track.

Richard Granger, the chief executive of Connecting for Health, said he would leave the post, and its £290,000-a-year salary, in October. "There is no doubt about the programme's achievability," said Mr Granger, who took up the role in October 2002. "Most of the building blocks are now in place."

Karen Jennings, the head of health at Unison, the NHS's biggest trade union, said Mr Granger's optimism was at odds with the views of the "majority of NHS staff".

She said: "Technically... things are finally coming together. But lessons must be learned from the way these over-ambitious, big-bang IT projects have been brought in late and so over-budget.""

IT expert raises concerns about NHS IT project - UK

IT expert raises concerns about NHS IT project

Some extracts from the report:

"Professor Martyn Thomas of Oxford said that glitches in booking appointments for patients in some hospitals using the system were not fully addressed before the next phase of the scheme was embarked on."

"The IT project is so big, that if it went completely wrong, it poses the danger of "wrecking the NHS", Professor Thomas added."

"The man in charge of the project, 42-year-old Richard Granger, failed his computer studies course at Bristol University, it recently emerged."

What a colossal, risky, grandiose waste of time and public money this unnecessary and largely unwanted exercise in folly is!