This appeared a few weeks ago:
Productivity: creating a government of 'doers' not 'gunnas'
Thu, 06/06/2013 - Peter Fritz
Too much time is spent on discussing, researching and strategising projects and not enough emphasis is placed on implementation. Peter Fritz explains how it’s time to incentivise project completion.
Decide faster, implement faster, monitor better, develop the right incentives to drive the process, that’s what’s needed to ensure Australia is productive.
Productivity is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input".
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Besides the obvious silos that are called departments, such as those of Finance, Innovation, Environment, Health and so on, our organisations are further divided into sections and units, few of which are co-ordinated for the single purpose.
An example of how this plays out is the introduction of electronic health records. First committed to in 1991, today after spending several billion dollars, Australia still does not have a fully functioning online health records system. Only 109,000 people have registered out of a target of 500,000 by June 2013. It should not have taken 22 years to get the project off the ground. This is just one of the many examples where our lack of productivity is failing us. It is not the billions of dollars spent that are the largest cost to the country and the community, but the opportunity costs a whole generation has missed out on.
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Peter Fritz AM is Managing Director of Global Access Partners, and Group Managing Director of TCG - a diverse group of companies which over the last 40 years has produced many breakthrough discoveries in computer and communication technologies. He chairs a number of influential government and private enterprise boards and is active in the international arena, including having represented Australia on the OECD Small and Medium Size Enterprise Committee.
The full blog is found here:
The comments in italics are really quite interesting. What we are given is a very strong reminder of the incredible ‘opportunity cost’ of all the messing about we have seen from Government in the e-Health domain. Frankly it is disaster and has surely killed people.
David.
I have been an outsider to healths inner workings, although I have worked in different capacities in health over the past 15 years.
ReplyDeleteThe inner sanctum of health is saved for academics, standards advocates and government officials, hence the reason eHealth has not gained much traction.
Involvement at all levels and all stakeholders is the key to delivering a record collaboration system like the PCEHR.
The amount of money that has been spent on wasted programs in health is amazing compared to other industries that deliver user friendly collaboration systems for information sharing.
The PCEHR is a simple medical history system. It is no different to a paper based system, but delivered electronically. That is it.
Why the cost and failure to deliver?
Numerous "Anonymous" posts have raised the Incalculable Opportunity Cost this ehealth malinvestment and maladministration has perpetuated over the preceding decades.
ReplyDeleteIt seems one of the fundamental problems is that Opportunity Cost is not at all understood by those governing and stewarding the investment of Taxpayers funds from observing the way they WASTE the funds with reckless abandon.
While on face value it may appear that the "Government" is funding healthcare and paying for all its services and WASTE, the fundamental TRUTH is that the TAXPAYERS are paying for all this WASTE, and especially the NET TAXPAYERS who are losing the most and gaining little if anything from this Faustian bargain!
By observation for the sheer lack of meaningful outcomes and complete absence of VALUE arising from this ehealth malinvestment by the Politicians, Bureaucrats and Qango sycophants, it appears they have nothing but contempt for Taxpayers and Taxpayers' funds and the concept or consideration of "Opportunity Cost"is furthest from their thinking processes and completely foreign to their mindset!
One certainty is the solution to this ongoing ehealth debacle is surely not to throw more taxpayers’ funds at them to wilfully neglect and abuse at Net Taxpayers expense. Reducing the taxpayer funded Inputs can only improve the productivity ratio, even with the meaningless, value-subtracting present outputs kept at their current embarrassing and unacceptable levels.
And the SPIN goes on, te te te tee teeh, and the SPIN goes on, te te te tee teeh :||