Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 262: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if approval has been granted by her for the national child care information service included in the Health Service Executive national service plan 2010; if her attention has been drawn to the fact that the Ombudsman for Children has strongly recommended that work to standardise processes and improve data sets by the HSE be continued as a priority and that there is an urgent need to provide the national uniform system in view of the current position regarding the application for funding for this system. [23336/10]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The National Child Care Information System (NCCIS) is a Health Service Executive project which has been included in the National Service Plan for 2010.

I share the view of the Ombudsman for Children that access to improved information based on standardised business processes across the child welfare and protection service within the HSE is essential in terms of improving the monitoring, measurement and quality of service delivery.

In accordance with Government policy a formal peer review process is applied to all major ICT projects in the Irish public sector. Peer review is designed to provide assurance that a project can progress successfully and is carried out at key decision points of a project including, inter alia, the business case stage, request for tender (RFT) and subsequent tender evaluation exercise, project initiation and at key milestones in the project cycle.

The business case for the NCCIS was peer reviewed in late 2009. The project was approved by the Department of Finance to allow it move to the preparation of the RFT. Preparation of the RFT, including a detailed requirements specification for the ICT system, is almost complete. Tender documentation will be sent for peer review shortly. Completion of this review will allow the HSE to advertise nationally and internationally for the NCCIS.

The project plan for the NCCIS identifies the need for standardised business processes to be implemented before the ICT system is deployed. I understand that the standardised processes have now been signed off for national implementation and that a senior official within the HSE has been assigned to the NCCIS project to lead out on implementation.