Last week’s National Audit Office (NAO) report on the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) should be praised for one thing above all else – for achieving a balance that is too often lacking elsewhere.

Expectations for the report were clearly low. On TV and in print, the mood had been set by headlines predicting that NPfIT was to receive a trouncing from the government watchdog.

Weeks of forecasts in some areas of the press gave the same impression – this was the moment that the programme would receive its come-uppance, and all the ‘I told you so’ doomsayers would be proved right. Many pairs of hands were being rubbed in gleeful anticipation.

In the end, the report did point out the genuine problems that exist, and the mistakes that have been made in the progress of the £6.2bn project – or should that now be £12.4bn. But it also praised NPfIT for many areas of real achievement.

As a result, the more considered observers tempered their headlines, and for once adopted the same balanced tone used by the NAO.

Problems do exist, and must be sorted. A lot of taxpayers’ money is being spent, and it needs to be accounted for. But considering this is the largest public sector IT project in Europe, possibly the world, to expect everything to be going perfectly smoothly three years into a 10-year programme is unrealistic.

Hard questions will continue to be asked of NPfIT, and rightly so. Problems must be rectified. But balanced scrutiny is essential, and Computing intends to provide that.

Perhaps the programme’s biggest weakness is its culture of secrecy. The longer that Connecting for Health (CfH), the agency charged with running NPfIT, stays on the back foot, the more opportunity it gives for critics and vested interests to promote every setback as a disaster, and for rumours and speculation to become fact.

Honesty and openness are the best policies for CfH to pursue. And, of course, making the technology work, on time and in budget.