Shares anyone?
So, which Tory spivs hold Fujitsu shares then?
The UK Post Office’s latest decision to extend Fujitsu’s controversial £2.3 billion Horizon contract follows the award of £142 million in wider government work to the Japanese supplier since the statutory inquiry into the disastrous project was first announced. Earlier this month, the Post Office awarded a £16.5 million …
While I'm sure the "right" answer is important to you these contract are awarded by civil servants and the Post Office is a private company.
I doubt it is possible to for a government to ban Fujitsu but without a doubt the real difficulty is that once any organisation fails to (a) consider the importance of interoperability and (b) fail to ask the question "and how do I get rid of you lot?" (to reframe Tony Benn's quote about democratic processes) the only way forward is carry ob with who you have got or a clone. The case study of d'addario strings' decison to rip out (in this case) Microsoft and go FOSS is as rare as it is instructive. They were stung by a licensing audit for software they were not even using and wanted at any cost to be rid of the shackle.
Horizon, as Private Eye reported for many years, was shameful. Failure to consider (a) and (b) above makes the disruption caused by ripping it out inconceivable. That's the real cost of these projects. It's true of all these deeply embedded outsourcers, especially once they have sold in their various secret sauces.
You should direct your ire and vitriol towards those at the operational level who took the decisions back in the day, after suitable technical visits to nice parts of the world provided by any of the usual suspects and other soft (or less soft) corruption.
It would be difficult to ban them but might not be impossible. The tender pre-qualification process for large contracts is used to ensure that only companies which have a chance of winning are allowed to tender. Technical, organizational and financial assessments form part of the pre-qual. process and it's not unusual to have clauses about convictions, outstanding legal/regulatory compliance issues, bringing the client into disrepute, and so on. A suitably motivated lawyer could word this to ensure that Fujitsu weren't allowed to tender for anything at least until all inquiries and legal actions were complete.
and the Post Office is a private company
Not disagreeing with your post, but it should be pointed out that Post Office Ltd. is not privately owned, it's owned by the UK government (specifically, its shareholder is the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.)
I guess this is why we as taxpayers will end up paying the compensation for this fiasco, which I'm absolutely fine with, as long as all the fuckers at Fujitsu and the Post Office (Post Office Counters Ltd. at the time I believe) who are responsible for this serve at least 5 years in the clink and are also barred from working in or on any public services for life.
Errrm: yes, it is easy. Compensate those who's lives were wrecked so that they are put into the financial positions that they would have been if this had not happened.
Then: look at damage due to anguish, etc, caused and thoroughly compensate them (and their kids, etc) for that.
The trouble with this is that there are many, many postmasters, etc, who were effected and so many in government have decided that compensation is "not affordable", so just say some fine words, theatrically wring hands and delay until most of them are dead or burned out.
How many of those who knew, or should have known but looked the other way, have been brought to book ?
The trouble with this is that there are many, many postmasters, etc, who were eaffected and so many in government have decided that compensation is "not affordable", so just say some fine words, theatrically wring hands and delay until most of them are dead or burned out.
Have they? Why should the government decide what is and isn't affordable for Fujitsu? It should be a simple decision for Fujitsu - if they want more government business then they have to be able to afford it, including compound interest.
Quote
"How many of those who knew, or should have known but looked the other way, have been brought to book ?"
This is the most galling thing to me, that people lied in court (or to victims defence lawyers) about horizons, and they KNEW horizons was crap, yet they said horizons data was 100% reliable.
And it wasn't in a mistaken belief in horizons , it was to avoid questions such as "How many more?" "How much will it cost to fix?" and "How long will I be jailed for contempt?"
And that fuckitso and post orafice managers were prepared to jail innocent people to protect themselves and their companies
Give it another 5 years or so and the only people left who worked with horizons will be the junior staff, and one of those will be thrown under a bus as a token action while the senior execs walk off into the sunset with large golden handshakes instead into jail wearing a pair of handcuffs.
PS. I work for an aerospace manufacturer...... if we tried anything like fuckitso/PO tried and were found out , we'd be slow roasted over a hot fire within 5 mins ...... and thats before lawyers got involved
I've written to my MP about this several times. At its core, the Horizon scandal wasn't about mistakes, it was about wrongdoing. It was about Fujitsu management being told by their development teams "Yes, this could happen" and then swearing on oath that it couldn't.
Miscarriages of justice work both ways: getting away with flagrant wrongdoing, whether at an individual or corporate level, is as obnoxious as banging up an innocent person.
“At the time, junior business minister Paul Scully said: "The Horizon saga has wrecked lives and livelihoods. We can't undo the damage that has been done. But we can establish what went wrong with the Post Office and ensure something like this is never allowed to happen again."”
Yes - swift compensation, and jail time for those culpable at Fujitsu and the Post Office - esp. those guilty of malicious prosecution and Directors running it.
More often than not I think the status quo is kept because Fujitsu are too big to fail. Yeah, it would be great if the work was given out to a "proper" UK company with a specific focus on these types of projects, but they often lack the financial wherewithal to weather any kind of legal storms. Sad but true.
I'm not defending any current politicians, but if Wikipedia can be relied upon for facts, the genesis of this project was in 1996, so many politicians of all stripes have had the opportunity to bask in the warm glow of a stuffed brown envelope or two along the way.
Don't forget the Horizon bit of Fujitsu is ICL as was. You would have to travel a long way to find a more useless bunch of fuckwits still operating.
My guess is that there are a bunch of entrenched systems that only they have the people to manage/develop and therefore they are still winning business.
Most of the problems with these big government IT projects are that there are massive amounts of politics with multiple public sector layers having different goals, some of which include ultimate failure of any project which would bring efficiency (job cuts) or transparency (oversight) into their domains.
Obviously the public sector can’t be seen to want its own projects to fail, nor can it be seen to be incompetent, and so there is an agreement with the larger IT integrators that they will take all the blame and reputational damage (notice how they never sue or brief against the story in any public sector project failure) in exchange for a) being paid fully and on time and b) getting more work in the next round of projects.
It’s win win for the parties involved while the public who loses only has the power to rant on message boards about the incompetence of this or that IT giant whose private sector projects mysteriously seem to be delivered with a much higher success rate.
PCPro also did some good work on the false paedophila allegations a few years ago, I don't know if they still do this kind of investigative journalism or not.*
* I used to subscribe to both magazines when I lived in the UK, but stopped after international postage costs started to get stupid
If people want to stop Fujitsu then one place to start is with your own behaviour. Do you work for or with them? I wont deal with FJ at all in any way, and I've made it clear when I join a company that I simple will not deal with them. I've taken that stance since they lied their way though the Great Hard Drive Fiasco twenty years ago, but the Horizons stuff is just the icing on the cake. I wont even assist servicing the aircon that these shysters make, let alone deal with services or tin they provide.
Do you get any of your data processed by FJ during the course of your life? Every time you do, Subject Access requests - and make it clear that you want to verify that the data is correct because of FJ known track record for covering up and lying through their teeth. Dont make the request to FJ - do it to the people who engaged FJ services. If it's a govt service using FJ complain to everyone, local councillors, MP's, everyone.
Oh and if you get invited to an interview, then tell the recuiter exactly why you are declining it. At length.
If they are frozen out and made a pariah, then eventually things will change.