After years of rumour and speculation, Richard Granger is finally leaving the £12bn National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT).

It has been a rollercoaster ride for the NHS, for the healthcare IT community, and for the man repeatedly billed as the UK’s highest-paid civil servant.

Love him or loathe him, Granger has certainly made an impact.

The five years since his appointment as director-general of the UK’s biggest civilian IT project in 2002, have seen major changes in the world of public sector IT. So much so that the rigour he brought to the NHS programme no longer stands out.

But Granger was one of the first to travel along what is now a well-trodden path from the private sector to top civil service IT jobs.

And after the ballooning costs of the undelivered

Libra magistrates’ courts programme, his famously punitive NHS contracts set a new standard for deal negotiations across Whitehall.

Granger is perhaps best known for his pugnacious style. It is an approach that at times has caused problems,with suppliers, press and colleagues. But it has also done much to raise the profile of IT in the NHS, and the public sector as a whole.

In an epic moment, Granger once likened his goal to that of Bazalgette – the Victorian engineer whose London sewers had such a massive impact on public health.

But Granger is perhaps better compared to Margaret Thatcher.

Difficult, widely vilified, thought by some to be on the verge of madness – but ultimately, after many years, grudgingly acknowledged to have shown admirable resilience in forcing through a programme of much-needed but truly seismic changes.

When asked about the legacy of the French Revolution, the 20th century Chinese revolutionary leader Chou En-lai famously said: ‘It is too soon to tell’.

It is undoubtedly too soon to call the National Programme. But what is certain is that whatever history says of Granger, his successor has a difficult act to follow.