Agenda Setters: Where are they now... Richard Granger

As we count down to silicon.com's sixth annual Agenda Setters poll of tech's 50 most influential individuals, it is time to look back at those individuals who held top 10 positions in 2004. Today we catch up with the man in charge of the £6bn NHS IT modernisation programme, Richard Granger.

The importance of the NHS's £6bn IT overhaul to the wider government efficiency agenda and Labour's election policy has been reflected in Richard Granger's inclusion on the last two Agenda Setters polls. Last year he shot into the top 10 ahead of some of tech's biggest CEOs, such as Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt - not bad for a civil servant.

Granger still faces repeated criticism that the NHS IT programme is being imposed on the health service without the vital involvement of frontline clinical staff.

Granger took over the post of director general of NHS IT in October 2002, becoming the UK's highest paid civil servant in the process with a salary of £250,000 per year, and was tasked with overseeing possibly the largest, most ambitious and complex IT project in the world.

The former Deloitte and Anderson management consultant has a reputation for taking no prisoners - with suppliers or the media - and has successfully overseen the award of NHS IT contracts worth billions of pounds in an unfeasibly short timescale for such a large project.

But, said industry observers, that was the easy part. The true test of Granger's acumen would be to see through the implantation of the key electronic patient record and e-booking systems, and the high-speed NHS broadband network.

That is where Granger's 'no prisoners' approach to the IT suppliers appears to have paid off, with some facing fines for delays, while IDX was ditched from the main electronic patient record contract for the south of England by chief service provider Fujitsu Services in the summer.

It's not all been plain sailing, however, and Granger still faces repeated criticism that the NHS IT programme is being imposed on the health service without the vital involvement of frontline clinical staff. Despite those criticisms Granger claims the 10-year programme is still "way ahead" of where most people thought it would be in the space of two years from a standing start.

But there is a feeling that Granger's work is largely done in overseeing the procurement and initial implementation of some of the key systems. With the programme now rebranded as Connecting for Health - from the more cumbersome National Programme for IT in the NHS - there is a definite shift in focus towards the public relations campaign to get the frontline health service staff onside.

There is no indication from Granger or his bosses at the Department of Health about his intention to move on but he doesn't seem to have spent longer than two years in previous roles - and there would undoubtedly be huge demand in the private sector or from other governments for his consultancy skills on the back of his work in the NHS.

For that reason, and with the rise up the political agenda of other major public sector IT initiatives such as ID cards, we'd guess that Granger won't finish high on this year's Agenda Setters poll, if he even makes the cut at all.

silicon.com's Agenda Setters panel, made up again of CIOs, analysts, VCs, consultants, lawyers, academics and other experts, convenes in September at our London offices with the results revealed at the end of the month. If you want to pass on your comments for our experts - about Richard Granger or any other contender - drop us an email at editorial@silicon.com.