One Of My Favourite Themes - Complexity - Seems To Have Struck Again. It’s All Harder Than It Seems.

 This appeared a little while ago.

VA, HHS hindered by IT complexity

Posted on Jul 25, 2014

By Government Health IT Staff

Federal government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration, are being hindered in carrying out their missions due to growing complexity of their IT networks.

A recent report from MeriTalk surveyed 200 government IT executives on behalf of network solutions provider Brocade, and found that the agencies are struggling with increasing network complexity.

The study found that more than half of agencies believe the complexity of their networks has increased over the past year, and 68 percent of the respondents believe network complexity restricts their ability to implement new technologies, services or capabilities.

An overwhelming majority – 81 percent – of network managers said they believe that network complexity can slow or halt IT performance objectives.

The respondents estimated their agency could save 18 percent of their IT budget, or $14.8 billion government-wide, by reducing network complexity by half.

IT managers at the DHHS, DOD and VA are facing all of these challenges, Tony Celeste, Brocade's director, U.S. Civilian Agencies, said.

"Today's government healthcare network was architected decades ago, long before this rapid evolution creating tremendous complexity in the network as it struggled to keep pace with a world dominated by connectivity," Celeste said. "The networks in many cases are out of date and burdened with proprietary protocols hindering the ability to leverage new, more innovative, cost effective technologies that are simpler."

Agency operations are now closely linked to agency performance.

Lots more details here:

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/va-hhs-hindered-it-complexity

Another example of the more you use technology the better planned it needs to be if the unexpected complexity is not to come back and bite you.

Reminds one of the blog from two days ago on the complexity and difficulty of getting e-Health right to say nothing of the issues around replacing the core Medicare and PBS systems.

A real unintended consequence!

David.