We note that, having heard the evidence of Mr Rollerson, you are now preparing your Report on the NHS National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT).

  We observe that the evidence Mr Rollerson presented was generally in support of the Programme. There were several areas where Mr Rollerson's comments may have caused some doubt within the Committee and we would like to set the record straight on these matters.

1.   Mr Rollerson's seniority and ability to comment on the Programme:

  Mr Rollerson is not a senior manager in the company. During the period of time Fujitsu has been involved with NPfIT, Mr Rollerson has been at least five levels down the Fujitsu Services organisation and at no time during this period he has been a member of the Fujitsu Services NHS account leadership team. During the period between early 2004 and June 2006 he did build up a team of Change Managers which peaked at 47 staff members. In the post he has occupied since June 2006, when he left the Programme, he had a team of two.

  Mr Rollerson informed the Committee that his responsibility or providing consultants... who would assist the NHS Trusts in changes they would have to make in order to make the technical deployment successful... in other words the process for redesign, the organisational restructuring, the benefits realisation... " The company stresses that the NHS Trusts are responsible for delivery of these items through the company assists by providing information and support. Mr Rollerson recruited and managed the consultants to enable Fujitsu to do this.

  Mr Rollerson has at no time been a member of any of the various committees which provide governance on the Programme either internally within Fujitsu or with NHS Connecting for Health or NHS officials.

  Mr Rollerson is not an expert on Project and Programme Management. His direct project management experience is limited and comes from early in his career.

  Mr Rollerson has stated that he was speaking at both the conference and the PAC for himself and not for the company. We would confirm this.

2.   Mr Rollerson's observations about managing the Programme with techniques normally used for small projects:

  As noted above, Mr Rollerson has limited expertise in these areas and was unable to observe the conduct of the overall Programme directly. His evidence is that he was informed about the Programme by the Change Managers provided by Fujitsu working in each deployed project. These Change Managers would themselves have had only a view limited to the individual projects in each NHS Trust.

  We can confirm that we are not aware of Mr Rollerson raising any concerns with any member of the account or programme leadership team regarding the direction, strategy or performance of the programme during his time on the bid, the programme or whilst supporting the account in business development activities over the four years of Fujitsu's involvement in NPfIT.

  The Fujitsu team is led by managers with many years experience in running some of the largest programmes ever conducted in the UK. We are unaware of any more advanced programme management techniques than those being used by the Fujitsu team.

  The same team has been responsible for the roll-out of the Picture Archiving and Communications System and Radiology Information Systems across the South of England which has just completed and which has been absolutely on schedule whilst delivering patient and clinician benefits as planned.

  The only advanced project management technique mentioned by Mr Rollerson was Value Management and, as he observed, Fujitsu has deployed this technique.

3.   Mr Rollerson's observations about the Programme becoming too IT-driven and the need for greater involvement of the Trusts.

  We would agree that, for any IT-enabled Programme to be successful, it should be seen as a business change and managed as such. There is a great deal of evidence of the Programme being business-led which was not discussed at the PAC hearing:

—  There has been substantial involvement of clinicians in the selection and detailed design of the solutions being deployed. The Southern Combined Clinical Advisory Group (SCCAG) has been involved from the start and is part of the governance of the Programme. There are 40-50 full-time NHS clinicians, matched by a similar number working for Fujitsu and Cerner, plus around 200 part-time subject matter experts working on the definition and design of future releases of the systems.

—  Each deployment project is co-led by the NHS Trust, is subject to full Trust Board approval and is reviewed regularly at Trust Board meetings.

—  Deployment projects include the development of new internal processes in order that the benefits of the new systems can be realised. This is a Trust responsibility supported by Fujitsu Change Managers.

—  The vast majority of Trusts in the South of England continue to support the increased IT investment and are keen to move forward with the installation of the Cerner Millennium system, just as they were keen to participate in the successful and rapid roll-out of PACS and Radiology Information Systems.

—  Through the NHS Local Ownership Programme, David Nicholson, the NHS Chief Executive, is moving moire of the responsibility from the centre to the local NHS ownership.

CONCLUSION

  In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the comments I made in my letter of 5 March 2007. Fujitsu Services is proud to be part of the industry team chosen to deliver the NHS National Programme for IT. We are fully committed to delivering our contract for the NPfIT Programme. We have already delivered a huge a mount of patient and clinician benefits through our successful deployment of Picture Archiving and Radiology Systems across the whole of the South of England. Over 140,000,000 clinical images are already stored on our database. We are now successfully deploying the first release of the Cerner Millennium Care Records System and already have the system live in 26 sites across five deployment families and used by approximately 7,000 users.

Peter Hutchinson

Managing Director

UK Public Sector

Fujitsu Services

22 March 2007