Cost of the NHS National Program for Information Technology

I have written a number of previous notes about the National Health Service's National Program for Information Technology in the U.K. (links here). I must confess that I had not been aware of the cost of this program until I came across the following item about inflated computer projects in the RoughType blog (boldface emphasis mine):

Grandiose software projects rarely succeed, and when government's involved the long odds get even longer. In the new Baseline [U.K. Dept of Health: Prescription for Disaster], Laton McCartney chronicles the disintegration of the vast, multibillion-dollar project aimed at overhauling England's health system. Four years into the 10-year effort, called the National Program for Information Technology, the original $12 billion budget has already ballooned to at least $24 billion, which is more than it cost to dig the tunnel under the English Channel. Two members of parliament recently wrote that the project "is currently sleepwalking toward disaster. It is far behind schedule. Projected costs have spiraled. Key software systems have little chance of ever working properly. Clinical staff is losing confidence in it."

Here's another quote from the Baseline article referenced above concerning attitudes toward the National Program for Information Technology by healthcare workers in the U.K.:

The project has little support among health-care workers. For example, only 38% of the country's doctors feel the project is a priority for the NHS, and just 13% believe that the program represents a good use of NHS resources, says a recent survey by Medix, an independent market research consultancy in England.

So what's the bottom line here? Are large ambitious HIT projects, particularly those managed by a government, nearly always doomed to failure? I personally believe that this is true, particularly when such projects lose the support of their user constituency . Computer projects seem particularly prone to mismanagement and failure when compared with, say, major engineering projects such as power plants or dams. I think that this is due to the fact that the success of a computer project is so dependent on the daily interactions with, and acceptance by, system users who are acutely aware when the software does not meet their individual needs.