I wish...
...I could say I was surprised, but I'm not in the least. I don't know what's been happening on the project over the last few years, but during the couple of years that I worked on part of this monumental cockup in the early days, there was never enough time to test anything properly (if at all). Usually because some bigwig in senior management, the Department of Health or the Government had declared that some bit of functionality or other would be available by some particular date, regardless of whether or not it could actually be achieved (political goals and point-scoring trumping everything else).
Add to that the usual IT industry mix of inadequate requirements, myopic design decisions and poor project management at several levels and it's a wonder that any bit of the system actually works at all, much less does the right thing or, indeed, anything.
That's not to say that there weren't some decent designers, good engineers, capable project managers, etc. all busting a gut trying to make some kind of faux-silk purse out of this particular sow's ear. It's just that they were usually outnumbered, and sometimes outranked, by the hordes of inexperienced and incompetent numpties who had been recruited by a senior management that largely consisted of utter idiots. Or, as it's commonly called in Government IT project circles, business as usual.
Remember to contact your GP and opt out. You'll probably be safer that way.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
