CSC's Global Outsourcing Services (GOS) group saw the biggest drop. posting $1.49 billion in revenues, a 13% percent drop (3% in constant currency) from a year ago. Business Solutions & Services (BS&S) was essentially flat with $1.01 billion versus $1.03 billion a year ago, while North American Public Sector (NPS) group revenues increased 3% year-on-year to $1.48 billion. But the healthcare sector – even the NHS National Programme for IT – was marked out as a bright spot, with a 17% revenue increase.

Two key milestones for NHS were achieved in the third quarter,” said CEO Mike Laphen. “They include the successful upgrade of our primary care solution which manages electronic patient records in doctor’s offices, community settings and prisons. Additionally, we achieved a release milestone with our emergency care solution that is installed on mobile devices and ambulances enabling emergency personnel online access to patient information.
“We went live with our Lorenzo Release 1 in the South Birmingham Primary Care Trust in late September. This was followed by our second successful early adopted go-live at the University Hospitals of Morcambe Bay. In early January this release was deployed to the wider clinical community at Morcambe. Feedback so far has been very encouraging.

“Our third early adopter, Bradford, remains on track to go live by the end of the fourth quarter. At that point the functionality of this first release of Lorenzo will have been fully trialed, completing its critical milestone and enabling us to proceed with the next phase of the roll out. To that end, some 20 trusts are currently in discussions with us regarding Release 1 implementation. In parallel we are already working with a further set of early adopters for Release 2 with full deployment scheduled to begin later this year. In addition to Lorenzo over 100,000 NHS professionals are today users of the systems that we have delivered and continue to deploy.”

Lapen clearly wasn't impressed by recent criticism from Mps about the slow progress of the wider NHS programme. “It is obviously a complex picture,” he noted. “First I would say that the data coming out of a government report always lags, that is it is a bit older than current data, so you do have that lag time. I think what they highlighted was there has been from the programme’s start some delay in the implementation of the capability. That, in fact, is true. We have been very straight forward about that.

“Having said that we have a schedule we are working against with the NHS. We had key milestones that we had to make in the third quarter which we did make and another one in the fourth quarter which we still expect to make relative to Release 1. Based on the direction I gave , we are on target relative to that.

“Rolling out Release 1 is a major accomplishment. At the same time we have been working on Release 2 and that development is essentially complete and we are now working with the customers in terms of some early testing on that. We are one of the players in the NHS overall programme. It is not unusual if there is a problem somewhere in the programme that just for notoriety or political reasons gets painted with a very broad brush. I know it is somewhat complex looking from the outside.

“I have to say we are pretty pleased with the developments we have had. We have over 100,000 users out there using all different aspects of the NHS program. Sometimes we get very focused on the Lorenzo delivery and implementation but there is many successful deliveries across the program from a CSC standpoint and from an NHS standpoint. We are making good progress. We all wish it had come a little bit faster than it had. The feedback we are getting back is quite encouraging.”
But he conceded that the NHS deal is a complicated one that carries some risk.

“ In all seriousness, in terms of contractual performance and delivery NHS is the most significant and by far the most complex. so that is the one I stay on top of most of all and watch most closely” he said. “On the other hand, the macro economy is a pretty difficult situation and from that standpoint I think what you are seeing us focus on and what we are trying to convey is we are going to manage those elements we can manage within this environment and that is expense control and cash management.”