NHS Scotland before the Microsoft deal

MICROSOFT’S former director for Scotland, Gordon McKenzie publically criticised NHS Scotland for it's inefficiency and claiming that the NHS in Scotland pays four times more than the English health service for its IT systems.

Down south, the NHS has signed a 10-year agreement with Microsoft that will represent a substantial discount on what would have been paid if each constituent part of the organisation had negotiated with the company.

"But NHS Scotland is still operating in a piecemeal way," said McKenzie. "Royal Bank of Scotland has 100,000 employees and one IT system. The NHS in Scotland is about the same size, but there are 14 NHS trusts and even within each trust there may be four different systems. They even have different e-mail systems."

McKenzie said there was "no plan for convergence" in the NHS and that the public services, including local government, could be heavily streamlined so there was one system for HR, one for payroll, and even one council tax across Scotland, but he said Microsoft was "making more money out of the mess".  [1]