Department of Health - d'oh for short

Channel 4 covered the latest MTAS breach very thoroughly indeed last night; they even ran an additional story that told of more shoddy government IT security which had leaked the personal details of doctors onto the Internet, this involved a Connecting for Health project run by the eternally bungling Richard Granger.

On the latest MTAS leaks Lord Hunt was quoted as 'it is outrageous that someone has leaked this information'. Obviously our favourite little dysmorphic gnome wants to try and conveniently pin the blame for this on an individual; even when it is abundantly clear that this is a huge system failure involving large numbers of people, and by deliberately rushing through this unfit process the politicians should be the ones ultimately held to account over this. It also came to light that a junior doctor's trainee organisation BOTA had written to Patricia Hewitt in early march to warn her of the slack security in MTAS, I wonder how many reasons for resignation are needed these days?

The lack of piloting and quality assurance of MTAS and MMC has already been commented on by myself, Front Point has taken a peek at specifics in Hansard. This bit seems rather key:

"Ms Rosie Winterton: The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) processes have been developed following extensive consultation which included both paper based and workshop based reviews within a formal project quality management framework. The MTAS information technology system is provided by an ISO9000 accredited supplier and has been reviewed and found fit to be for purpose.

The Modernising Medical Careers programmes itself has been subject to scrutiny by the Office of Government Commerce Gateway Review process in both 2005 and 2006."

These are a 'very basic form of quality assurance and do not really provide much confidence that the end product will be satisfactory', no surprise there then.

Just to finish with a quote from the incompetent that even his own mother despises, Richard Granger:

"A remarkable number of the general public do entrust information through electronic channels"

Well not anymore they won't. MTAS has now openly admitted to lying regarding the site being closed for 'planned maintenance work', they have now said that they are investigating the latest security breaches.

Incompetence, lies, incompetence, lies, incompetence, lies, lies, lies, incompetence, laws broken, lies, laws broken, incompetence, lies, lies and more damn lies. How much longer until MTAS is consigned to the scrap heap and someone is held to account for this?

Indeed, what next?