Interesting Parallels
The iniquitous NHS IT scheme, that plans to include an electronic database of patients’ medical records is hopelessly over budget and behind time:
The government plan to give every patient in the UK an electronic medical record is running late and hopelessly over budget, according to the government minister in charge of the project.
Lord Warner said the scheme was running at least two and a half years behind schedule. He also admitted that the final cost is likely to be closer to £20bn than the £6.2bn originally quoted.
Woah! Hang on a minute there pardner… I seem to recall that the National Identity Register – you know, the Stasi like database that underpins the ID Cards Act (2006) was going to cost around £6bn….
Looks more and more as if the LSE was closer to the truth on costs.
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
Comment by Pete in Dunbar
# May 30, 2006,
Hang on! Surely the original quoted cost of the project was £2.3bn.
It’s now approaching ten times the quoted cost, and still heading upwards.
Comment by Longrider
# May 30, 2006,
That makes it far worse than I cite. You’d have thought El Reg would have checked its own archives :devil: But, then, what’s the odd couple of billion here or there?
Pingback by Ministry of Truth
# May 31, 2006,
[...] Tim Worstall, ever with his eye on the economic picture, notes that the now £20 billion cost of the system amounts to 1.5-2% of Britain’s output for a single year, while both he and Longrider draw obvious parallels with the Government’s other massive database project, the National Identity Register, which the state claims will cost £6 billion, a figure disputed by the London School of Economics, who put its estimate of the cost of the system at around £18 billion - three times higher, yet again. [...]