Wisdom of Socrates called into question
Socrates is a central database for the 15 Health Ministry-funded Needs Assessment and Service Co- ordination organisations (Nascs), which assess needs and allocate services for the disabled.
The system, which went live late last year, is designed to collect and store information from Nascs and send payment information to HealthPAC, which processes payments for the ministry.
Craig Hutchison, director of Christchurch Nasc Lifelinks, says staff are pleased the system was developed because they can see long-term benefits, but there are many teething issues.
If there is heavy demand, it can take a long time to enter data and staff are sometimes logged off as a result. If an error is made, perhaps with a clients service level allocation, it is a very long-winded, frustrating process to remedy it.
Mr Hutchison says Lifelinks spent $23,900 to implement Socrates and the ministry hasnt responed to reimbursement requests. Lifelinks previously used its own system, which it developed with software developer Global Office.
Global Office managing director Chris Tacon says Lifelinks system, NascOnline, was reviewed by the ministry along with other Nasc systems before it went to tender for a national system.
Feedback was that our system was vastly superior and covered 90 per cent of requirements and exceeded them in some areas.
But NascOnline was not short- listed for the tender and Global Office, which has seven staff, was told it did not have the infrastructure to develop the product.
Mr Tacon says Simpl, the company that won the contract, had to learn the whole business process for Nascs from scratch.
We offered the ministry a copy of our system, including the source code, and access to one of our developers for a couple of weeks %26ndash; everything they needed to give them a headstart.
But he says Global Office and the ministry could not agree on a sum for these services. We were down to $125,000, they offered $20,000. We found that offer insulting, to be honest. NascOnline cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop, but could have been implemented for much less than the cost of Socrates.
Health Ministry business support manager David Chrisp says Socrates suffered a number of implementation problems but these have largely been addressed.
The biggest issue was the response time of the system, which is web-based. This has been addressed by buying more bandwidth.
He says there was a short-term increase in payment errors immediately after the implementation of Socrates.
Mr Chrisp says Global Office did not submit a formal proposal and the ministry was of the view that NascOnline would have met fewer than 90 per cent of the requirements.
National Party disability issues spokesman Paul Hutchison, who has questioned Health Minister David Cunliffe about Socrates, says the impression he had was it wasnt working that well at all.
