MTAStic

The MTAS system is down for routine maintenance. This is apparently not a reaction to the discovery that the system lacks even rudimentary protection, and so allows the personal data of thousands to be accessed freely from the web. Or maybe the daily failings of MTAS are simply considered routine, which perhaps seems more likely.

So, we have a system which crashes, is difficult to access, loses data, and fails to match the best doctors with the right jobs - that as an added bonus makes identity theft a doddle, allowing anyone to masquerade as a qualified doctor and seek work as a locum.

It is reassuring to be told that these problems won't affect the rest of the £12billion pound CfH white elephant - which will make everyones medical records accessible nation-wide. Well, everyone except important people like government minsiters, whose health data will be protected. Even more reassuring to reflect on the long list of successful government IT programmes - the Child Support Agency system, for example, or the Working Families Tax Credit syestem, both of which wasted billions. Absolutely reassuring to be reassured by the same people who have repeatedly told us, despite all the evidence, what a great success MMC and MTAS have been.

Does anyone else wonder why the government feels it needs to know about sexual orientation, or why it wants GPs to record the ethnic origin of every patient? The only other governments (as far as I am aware) that have done this are Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia and Apartheid South Africa. Are these the models we really wnat to be associated with?