All CEO’s should be hired from outside the NT! It is quite clear that home grown CEOs are complete crap and cost the locals untold resources in wasted monies!
Question: Are the relatives of the ex HEALTH CIO who commissioned a custom built and very poorly designed medical software from a company that has never built Medical software, that Health used for decades, and ACACIA is now replacing, now managing the very dismal rollout of Acacia?
Hosking is alleged to have attempted a big bang roll-out at all hospitals in one hit, a ridiculous notion, that would have require huge support resources, a complete business case analysis of existing software policy and procedures.
Then it is alleged that IT Consultants may have suffered workplace bullying as things blew out.
A fresh set of external eyes will be critical in moving forward, keeping innl mind public health must be delivered.
Hosking has denied health services to yerritorians and provided a bizzare culture that is not fitting with effective public health services. Based on this time as CEO we can assume the master plan for NT health will have little to do with Territorians health and well being.
Rather than accept accountabilities; N.T. governance chronic perseverance to persist, repair, modify . . . has not, and may not ever secure territory health needs? Everything is not under control. Urgent rectification, potential loss of life, mental breakdown, suicide . . . remain.
Territorian(s) are not stupid. We are at risk. Medics are at risk. Public at large is at risk. Only Politician(s) at this moment fear not? Accountability . . . has seldom kept many awake or distressed?
Indeed, its quite a locked on culture, might be time to shuffle ministers to get some control at and truth telling from NT Health that has a lack of care for territorians. This has been top down failure with executive thinking they can bully and deny people. We have an Australian charter of health care rights that they completely ignore. We need ministers that are committed to drive positive change and value public health.
The Acacia ‘shemozzle’: How an NT Health software upgrade went so wrong
Saturday 1 February 2025 Source: ABC
It was sold as an IT system that would take Northern Territory Health into the digital age.
The NT government’s Acacia project was designed to revolutionise how clinicians work.
Using software from vendor InterSystems, Acacia was to integrate several patient record systems into one, across all NT Health facilities, giving doctors and nurses more comprehensive information, faster.
“We are the first state or territory in Australia to implement a system with this capability,” then-chief minister Adam Giles boasted of Acacia in 2016.
But after nearly nine years and almost $300 million spent, the first of the project’s five stages hasn’t been completed, and the system remains suspended at the NT’s busiest emergency department inside Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH).
An attempted rollout at RDH in 2023 had clinicians declaring Acacia such a threat to patient safety, they successfully demanded NT Health revert to a system from 1991 that “makes Windows 3.1 look fancy”, an employee not authorised to speak publicly said.
Screenshot of a Windows 3.1 desktop The current system in use at NT Health facilities is as old as Windows 3.1. (Supplied: GlitchMadness256/Deviant Art)
Where did it go wrong? Acacia was an NT Health proposal the Country Liberal Party (CLP) government committed to right before it was booted from office in 2016.
Territory Labor took over and fully funded the program, taking its budget from an initial $186 million to $259 million in 2017.
By 2019, Labor said Acacia’s five-year, five-stage rollout plan was on track to be fully operational across all NT Health facilities by late 2021.
But behind the scenes, it wasn’t going smoothly.
Emergency hospital sing with hospital building in background Acacia was rolled out at Royal Darwin Hospital in November 2023. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)
Acacia was being designed and built for NT Health by InterSystems, but the Department of Corporate and Digital Development (DCDD) was running the project.
An Acacia project insider told the ABC the relationship between the two government agencies was “terrible, it was awful”.
“Health saw that their autonomy had been taken away,” they said.
“There were the guys from DCDD who didn’t understand health at all.
“There would have been millions of dollars wasted on meetings, trying to understand what NT Health needed.
“It took 300 people to screw in a light bulb. They ended up having meetings about meetings. It was a shemozzle.” Royal Darwin Hospital Intensive Care Unit Acacia was suspended at Royal Darwin Hospital’s emergency department in January 2024. ( ABC News: Hamish Harty )
That lack of understanding subsequently led to a breach of thousands of identifiable patient health files.
The files were transferred from DCDD to InterSystems without a data governance plan or privacy impact assessment being undertaken.
As would later happen, DCDD chief executive Chris Hosking was promoted by the CLP last year to become chief executive of NT Health, ironically with a mandate to keep health on budget.
Are you new to the NT? Your never going to hear about it! They want it delayed and eventually dropped! In no consequences NT, no one in the NTG gets in trouble! I paraphrase a former Chief Minister talking to the top dog HR person at a HR conference at the then Sky City Casino Ballroom: “What? 18000 Public Servants and their all well behaved and no one is in trouble?”
All CEO’s should be hired from outside the NT! It is quite clear that home grown CEOs are complete crap and cost the locals untold resources in wasted monies!
Question: Are the relatives of the ex HEALTH CIO who commissioned a custom built and very poorly designed medical software from a company that has never built Medical software, that Health used for decades, and ACACIA is now replacing, now managing the very dismal rollout of Acacia?
100%
We need the culture created eliminated in these roles, issues are top down failures.
Good luck NT Treasury.
Hosking is alleged to have attempted a big bang roll-out at all hospitals in one hit, a ridiculous notion, that would have require huge support resources, a complete business case analysis of existing software policy and procedures.
Then it is alleged that IT Consultants may have suffered workplace bullying as things blew out.
A fresh set of external eyes will be critical in moving forward, keeping innl mind public health must be delivered.
Hosking has denied health services to yerritorians and provided a bizzare culture that is not fitting with effective public health services. Based on this time as CEO we can assume the master plan for NT health will have little to do with Territorians health and well being.
Rather than accept accountabilities; N.T. governance chronic perseverance to persist, repair, modify . . . has not, and may not ever secure territory health needs? Everything is not under control. Urgent rectification, potential loss of life, mental breakdown, suicide . . . remain.
Territorian(s) are not stupid. We are at risk. Medics are at risk. Public at large is at risk. Only Politician(s) at this moment fear not? Accountability . . . has seldom kept many awake or distressed?
Indeed, its quite a locked on culture, might be time to shuffle ministers to get some control at and truth telling from NT Health that has a lack of care for territorians. This has been top down failure with executive thinking they can bully and deny people. We have an Australian charter of health care rights that they completely ignore. We need ministers that are committed to drive positive change and value public health.
Budget over public health – the CLP mandate
The Acacia ‘shemozzle’: How an NT Health software upgrade went so wrong
Saturday 1 February 2025
Source: ABC
It was sold as an IT system that would take Northern Territory Health into the digital age.
The NT government’s Acacia project was designed to revolutionise how clinicians work.
Using software from vendor InterSystems, Acacia was to integrate several patient record systems into one, across all NT Health facilities, giving doctors and nurses more comprehensive information, faster.
“We are the first state or territory in Australia to implement a system with this capability,” then-chief minister Adam Giles boasted of Acacia in 2016.
But after nearly nine years and almost $300 million spent, the first of the project’s five stages hasn’t been completed, and the system remains suspended at the NT’s busiest emergency department inside Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH).
An attempted rollout at RDH in 2023 had clinicians declaring Acacia such a threat to patient safety, they successfully demanded NT Health revert to a system from 1991 that “makes Windows 3.1 look fancy”, an employee not authorised to speak publicly said.
Screenshot of a Windows 3.1 desktop
The current system in use at NT Health facilities is as old as Windows 3.1. (Supplied: GlitchMadness256/Deviant Art)
Where did it go wrong?
Acacia was an NT Health proposal the Country Liberal Party (CLP) government committed to right before it was booted from office in 2016.
Territory Labor took over and fully funded the program, taking its budget from an initial $186 million to $259 million in 2017.
By 2019, Labor said Acacia’s five-year, five-stage rollout plan was on track to be fully operational across all NT Health facilities by late 2021.
But behind the scenes, it wasn’t going smoothly.
Emergency hospital sing with hospital building in background
Acacia was rolled out at Royal Darwin Hospital in November 2023. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)
Acacia was being designed and built for NT Health by InterSystems, but the Department of Corporate and Digital Development (DCDD) was running the project.
An Acacia project insider told the ABC the relationship between the two government agencies was “terrible, it was awful”.
“Health saw that their autonomy had been taken away,” they said.
“There were the guys from DCDD who didn’t understand health at all.
“There would have been millions of dollars wasted on meetings, trying to understand what NT Health needed.
“It took 300 people to screw in a light bulb. They ended up having meetings about meetings. It was a shemozzle.”
Royal Darwin Hospital Intensive Care Unit
Acacia was suspended at Royal Darwin Hospital’s emergency department in January 2024. ( ABC News: Hamish Harty )
That lack of understanding subsequently led to a breach of thousands of identifiable patient health files.
The files were transferred from DCDD to InterSystems without a data governance plan or privacy impact assessment being undertaken.
As would later happen, DCDD chief executive Chris Hosking was promoted by the CLP last year to become chief executive of NT Health, ironically with a mandate to keep health on budget.
I want to know how you can have a complete disaster and still get promoted
@ed
Easy get a job in the NT Government.
What happenned to the investigation on the program that resulted in a tragic death of IT staff member?
Are you new to the NT?
Your never going to hear about it! They want it delayed and eventually dropped! In no consequences NT, no one in the NTG gets in trouble!
I paraphrase a former Chief Minister talking to the top dog HR person at a HR conference at the then Sky City Casino Ballroom: “What? 18000 Public Servants and their all well behaved and no one is in trouble?”
Do not go to this redit page whatever you do, focussing on Acacia Disaster from the army of former contractors that came up to Darwin and suffered horribly at the hands of the local yokals:
https://www.reddit.com/r/darwin/comments/1hu303r/acacia_system_stuff_up/