UK Post Office + Fujitsu .. problem.

[confused2]

If you hear about this you might wonder what we're up on our side of the Pond.

The people running our post office branches are self-employed. They provide post office services which include banking .. people can deposit and withdraw cash at a post off branch. All branches use 'Horizon' software supplied by Fujitsu.

So what can go wrong?

..the “Dalmellington Bug”, after the village in Scotland where a post office operator first fell prey to it, would see the screen freeze as the user was attempting to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed “enter” on the frozen screen, it would silently update the record. In Dalmellington, that bug created a £24,000 discrepancy, which the Post Office tried to hold the post office operator responsible for.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...e%20record.

So when the Post Office guys investigate maybe months or years later and find £24k missing .. would you remember clicking 'Accept' more than once on the assumption that it had ignored the  first attempt?

The next bug (Callendar Square) creates duplicate transactions. Mr Trotter from HQ says

“I’d always thought it was fit for purpose and operated as intended.”

At the latest enquiry..

He [Trotter] was taken to a series of emails which had been sent, forwarded or cc’d to him whilst he was in post, describing a serious Horizon error, known as the Callendar Square bug. It affected a number of branches. In one email, Fujitsu engineer Anne Chambers wrote:

“This problem has been around for years and affects a number of sites most weeks.”

Trotter admitted that this should have caused him to be alarmed.

More: https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/tr...ffice-why/

Even better is that Post Office HQ is owned by the taxpayer so it will be the taxpayer that pays up to £1 billion in compensation to those wrongly convicted.

At the current enquiry ..

There's a brief pause as Beer realises Jenkins [representing Fujitsu] is being troubled by a fly which is buzzing around him.
"If it becomes too much, we'll break and get rid of it," the lawyer says.
Someone watching today's evidence mutters: "It's a bug."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cmjjjg8drggt

[stryder]

Unfortunately government large IT projects are doomed to repeat failing. Theres been a bunch of them from back in the late 80's (such as the number of renditions that lead to the dematerialisation of the London Stock Exchange, the banking system upheavel involving the antiquated databases and of course the NHS upgrading from the greenscreen Amstrads to windows systems that ended up prone to ransomware.)

All the faults that occur in design do need to be identified loudly to make sure that designers of the next gen do not repeat the same mistakes.... although they are bound to find other issues.

[confused2]

The self-employed people running the sub post offices were forced to use the bug-ridden accounting software supplied to Post Office HQ by Fujitsu.. any shortfall of cash had to be made up for out of the owners pocket and/or be prosecuted for theft and/or false accounting. PO HQ gave bonuses for successful prosecutions so there was no incentive to look beyond the computer generated accounts. The PO prosecutors would claim in court that the computer records were impeccable despite knowing they were not. Faced with apparently overwhelming evidence the defendant would be offered the option of pleading guilty to false accounting and in return the charges of theft would be dropped - claiming it would be unlikely that they would be given a prison sentence if they agreed to this. Given that most prosecutions resulted in a guilty plea it seemed like the software was actually catching criminals and not (the reality) a way for PO HQ staff to get bonuses.

After 20 years, 900 prosecutions and an unknown number other actions taken as a result of unreliable computer generated evidence .. PO HQ staff and management either deny responsibility, or have amnesia.

[confused2]

The defence given by the managers of Post Office Ltd (POL) is "Had we known at the time [that the evidence we relied on in Court was unreliable] we would have done things differently".

After watching several days of a public inquiry my personal conclusion (shared by many) is that POL knowingly misrepresented the evidence given to Courts as 'reliable' despite knowing it was not - the claim 'they did not know' continues to this day (5th July 2024).

The cost of finding (proving?) 'they knew' has involved trawling through millions of documents for a public inquiry costing (to 2023) about £20 million with (likely) a similar cost in 2024. The true extent of money wasted and lives ruined may never be known.

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org...port_0.pdf

How long have 'they' known? In 2003 POL presented (in Court) a transcript taken from a Fujitsu help line after removing any evidence that anyone other than the defendant had any problem with the computer [Horizon] system. So there is evidence that they were doing this sort of thing (gaslighting?) at least as far back as 2003.

In 2014 the CEO (Paula Vennels) sent an email (which she now regrets sending) which rather strongly suggests she knew what was going on and as CEO .. she was responsible for it.

I understand the government (now the previous government) were allowing up to £1 billion to deal with the fallout from .. the evidence presented in court by POL not being the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.