Fujitsu does not trust Post Office in use of Horizon data in future third-party prosecutions Fujitsu's Europe boss has told a public inquiry into the Post Office scandal — one of the widest miscarriages of justice in UK history — that the company does not trust the UK public body in its use of Horizon system data to support future police prosecutions. Speaking at the inquiry this week, Paul Patterson, director of …
So in truth, Post Office would have been happy using EOL systems and prosecuting staff until the cows come home and now the truth is out, it's a mad scramble to replace everything, nobody wants to support or trust the old system and the new system will be brought online full of bugs, staff will be blamed, seniors will get bumper pay rewards and the cycle turns.
@Tubz
More like the spec for the new system was written so precisely that only one provider could possibly build it, but after all the fallout from Horizon (which they have to have seen coming for many years behind the scenes) that provider has failed to meet the spec (i.e. don't want the job), delaying the new system to such a extent that the old system with all it's flaws has to kept creaking along (at great expense) well beyond it's intended lifespan and is now at the point where they don't dare switch it off in case it doesn't come back on.
Don't forget that at some point Horizon was a MATURE system - a decade of development, stable, in support from the original company, and used across the entire Post Office.
And *that* is when they had a lot of problems with it still.
Fujitsu are just trying to pass the buck here... the Post Office shouldn't be expected to ditch an entire nationwide accounting system every 5-10 years "just because" and migrate thousands of individual customers to entirely new hardware and systems. Fujitsu should have been supporting their existing system and fixing the bugs that they knew full well existed in it.
And Fujitsu should have came out TEN YEARS AGO minimum to say that it shouldn't have been used for prosecutions because it wasn't reliable, but they never did (and in fact never admitted as much to their own customer either).
Both entities are liable, both are to blame, and you can't just say "Oh, it's an old system and needed replacing" - it literally NEVER WORKED PROPERLY and still doesn't.
True. Problem is always management. Take us for example. Had a great IT manager who was then tasked with getting a new management system in place, ran by the new head of that project. The new head of that project (the cock) had fuck all experience with IT and started to listen to said cocks "consultant". Said cock listened to the consultant more than his own staff and said consultant recommended a company that we all knew was shit and their proposed system wasn't good.
Said cock continued to ignore this advice and went with the consultant's recommendation, funny how this suppose to be impartial consult had recommended said package to others over the years.
Anyway, its gone live, the really good manager left due to all the politics bullshit and because the head of that project was/is truely shit and a grifter much like Trump.
System is in place, system is shit, head of that project is still about and still attempts to defend it.
I agree...the frustrating part is we've probably all been in situations like this (albeit with lower stakes) and we know exactly how this shit panned out...but no amount of investigation will ever help the people that instigated the problem to understand it.
It will happen again for exactly the same reasons.
The public sector is full of fucking idiots that are incapable of seeing the big picture on things. I know the post office isn't strictly entirely public sector, but that's where it's roots are and it is essentially run entirely like a public sector org.
They're just simple minded boneheads with simple goals and no understanding of the big picture.
Take cost cutting as an example right (apt because I think the whole Post Office thing is probably rooted in a cost cutting measure somewhere)...in the private sector, cutting costs usually means making things more efficient, you don't usually focus on spending less money, you focus on getting more for the money that you are spending...thus cutting costs. The solutions here might involve changing a supplier, or switching to a different material, using different components etc etc...if you currently buy your cardboard boxes from X for £1 each, but you find someone else that can make the same thing for 90p...you still spend the same amount of money on boxes, but now you have 10% more boxes, that might lead to an efficiency somewhere or an increase in output because now you have capacity in your supply chain for the same price...you could stockpile them in case there is a shortage at some point or you just want to not buy boxes for 1 month a year (December, because it's Christmas and cardboard box prices go up), you could sell them on, you could repurpose them...sky is the limit...private sector thinking. Budgets should always rise, and never go down...what's important is what you do with the budget and what you can gain from it.
In the public sector on the other hand, cutting costs literally means spending less money...so given the box example above, they now buy exactly the same number of boxes, but for 10% less...absolutely nothing changed other than 10% less spending. You added no capacity, gave yourself no potential advantages, you have no room for contingency in the future, you just managed to save 10p a box...but for what purpose? Now that you've saved that money, it will just lead to your budget being cut for next year because the department responsible for your budget can see that you don't need as much money, so they will take the 10% and claim it as their own, maybe give themselves 10% of that 10%, then further up the chain another one and another one...until eventually that 10% ends up spread so fucking thin that it makes absolutely no difference to anything...all that happened is one department fucked itself out of 10p a box, some graduate with a spreadsheet gets a pat on the back for "saving" £1000 a year, while other departments smeared the 10p out over loads of other departments to make it vanish. Taxpayer gets hit the same. No actual money was saved.
> it will just lead to your budget being cut for next year because the department responsible for your budget can see that you don't need as much money
This so many times over, at a past job in the 1980's had public authorities buying expensive kit in February that could never be delivered for several months but getting invoiced before the year end just to preserve the budget!
Madness, absolute madness.
The public sector is full of fucking idiots Why are people who work in the public sector idiots and (by inference) those who don't not?
Take cost cutting as an example right. The governments previous to this one cut the budget of local authorities by 40%. What would you do if your salary was cut by 40%?
Proper future planning so that a 40% cut doesn't translate into a 40% cut immediately...while you have the budgets, you invest in things that reduce your reliance on the budgets in the future. That's common sense.
If 100% of your local authority budget was operational expenditure, then everyone in your local authority running things is 100% bone from the neck up because they treated your local budget like your granny budgeting for biscuits on pension day. Morons.
I'll give you an example of how local authorities are fucking numb. The cost to fill a pothole in, on average is about £89 across the UK...the average cost to resurface 1 square metre of road is about £50.
Resurfacing 1km stretch of road costs about £25,000 and needs to be done every 10-15 years depending on the traffic volume etc.
My road has around 11 potholes in it, the entire stretch, and they get filled 2-3 times a year. That means in the 10 years that a complete resurface would last for (worst case scenario), they're spending £29,370 (at least) on filling in potholes...each time they do it, they cause traffic, close the roads etc etc and the fix is temporary, they'll be back to paying out for damaged vehicles and broken ankles in no time...if the surface lasts for 15 years, it's even fucking worse.
The reason they do this is because they can't fathom a £25,000 project to resurface a road, but it's easy for these fuckwits to fathom a couple of blokes with buckets, shovels and an £89 bill.
See here is the thing with budgets...if all you do is fill in potholes and you never invest in repairing road surfaces properly, then a 40% budget cut is a massive problem. But if you laid a new surface 2 years ago when the budget existed, you still have a possible 13 years to go before you have to worry about your fucking pothole budget...a 40% cut doesn't hurt as much and the area doesn't go to shit quite as quickly as it would otherwise...in fact it might ride it out until budgets increase again.
Public sector workers just don't think this way.
Proper future planning so that a 40% cut doesn't translate into a 40% cut immediately
A 40% cut will always translate into a 40% cut unless you have reserves to spend or you sell assets (to paraphrase Mrs T, "The problem with conservatism is that you eventually run out of public assets to privatise").
Modest cash reserves are no bad thing, but if you were keeping that sort of cash swilling around, people would ask why you weren't investing in local improvements or infrastructure (like the renewals you proposed!). It'd take 15years to build up that sort of money running a 3% budget surplus. Even if you had 40% of your annual spend stashed away, that either lasts you a year (in the face of 40% cuts), or two years if you do 20% cuts.
I'll give you an example of how local authorities are fucking numb.
The point you're making is not wrong. But you are utterly wrong to direct your ire at the councils. Many local authorities would fucking love to do what you've proposed. They know how inefficient it is to do things in dribs and drabs.
Three problems:
1. They're not usually allowed to run their own highways department, which means every pothole gets itemised as a separate job to a sub-sub-contractor. At one point Private Eye were investigating a hospital cleaner who was trying to get £45 of unpaid wages. There were four separate entites involved - the NHS Trust, the PFI/building manager, the cleaning agency and then the employment agency (because the cleaning agency wouldn't want to do anything so grubby as to employ people, with NI, paid sick leave, holiday or pensions). The coffee drunk at the meetings that were convened to sort out this embarrassing failure probably cost more than £45. This is all dictated by Whitehall. Not the Trust (or local councils).
2. Expenditure over a certain amount will require ungodly levels of approval, or go to a separate "strategic refurbishment budget" instead of them just being able to spend the £89 and get it filled next week/month. So you can get a sort-of-okay job done soon, or the proper job done in 18months.
3. They literally don't have the money to do the big thing. They'd like to, but they're so starved of cash that they can't do any more than the quick fix. Yes, this is basic Boots theory (GNU Pterry).
To give you an example of the madness of how local authorities have been straitjacketed into privatisation, I worked for a company in a lovely old (listed, victorian) building owned by the council - library on the ground and small business units above for rent. We needed a lightbulb changing (near a high ceiling. You could have got 2 mezzanine levels in there).
* We logged this with the council bod who looked after the building.
* He told Kier Building Services (yeah)
* Kier sent two guys in suits(!) to look at the lightbulb and ascertain that it did indeed need changing.
* The suits sent a guy with a ladder, who walked in and said "Jaysus, I can't reach that. They didn't say it was that high".
* Two weeks later he came back with a mate and a collapsible platform that got them up there. And they just changed the one bulb because that was all that was on the sheet.
Occasionally the boiler would trip off and we'd freeze for a day because there was asbestos in the boiler room and they needed a specially trained guy to push the reset button (and having watched the process from the door... all you had to do was hold your breath, walk in, push a trip and come back out. And the room was fine. There was asbestos sheet on the wall which would only have been hazardous if you went at it with a hammer).
Now, if the council just employed a caretaker/custodian, they'd know all the foibles of the building. They'd have a platform and the right bulbs in stock. They'd do all of them whilst they had the platform up. It would be efficient. And when things were a bit slow, they could touch up the peeling paint in the stairwell, or do some preventative maintenance (which is usually cheaper than repairing something after it's broken).
The council bod wanted to do that. He really did. But the problem was that Kier were ever so slightly cheaper than employing someone full time, and central govt dictats prohibited him from doing that.
Tories and accountants will look at that and say "ah well, but it's cheaper". Sensible people will say "yeah, but you're getting a bare minimum service because every little thing is a billable item and so they only do repairs or big, budgeted renovations" - not things like touching up paint, changing all the bulbs whilst you're up there, or preventative maintenance, which you get when you have a "sunk cost" full time custodian floating around (or even part-time, split between a couple of buildings).
Happily, this trend is reversing. I know a couple of sparkies employed directly by the NHS in a hospital. They moved over from a contractor. Better benefits, pension and job security - and cheaper for the trust overall. But until central government give the councils the money (or revenue powers) to do the efficient thing upfront, they're stuck doing the bare-minimum to scrape by.
But if you laid a new surface 2 years ago when the budget existed
Lol. Firstly, you're pretending that any council has run at a substantial surplus since Thatcher. Even if some councils had a good run under Blair, they've been under starvation rations since 2010. So whichever way you cut it, all those roads with a 10-15year lifespan are now up for renewal, however hard they've been patched. But they've had 14years of budget cuts. When on earth were they supposed to do the renewal?
And you're presuming that they're not doing proper renewals - they will be, but in the really urgent places like trunk roads (probably not outside your house). Every residential street in your town is probably much the same as yours - and they definitely haven't got budget to resurface all off them. So they patch here and there, renew where they can and focus on core arteries.
"how the hell are they still trying to get away with this system as the basis of any prosecution...."
Well they still use the pseudo science of forensics. Seriously, look into the history of forensic "science" and see what utter bullshit it is
Only DNA evidence can be classed as science, the rest was just made up by people with something to sell.
Could you please explain this in more detail with reference to comparing textile fibres b*y:
Transmitted light microscopy
Fluorescence microscopy
Polarised light microscopy
TLC dye separation
Visible light spectroscopy
IR spectroscopy
When you've done that you can move on to toxicology which was never my area but they seemed to have a lot of kit back in the day.
And I'd like your take on use of SEM with or without XRF
That should keep you busy for a while. Or perhaps you could admit you've never set foot inside a forensic science laboratory and that your supposed knowledge is gained from watching CSI and the like on the box.
* There may be more because when I left, a long time ago, we'd just been talking to a manufacturer & learning about addition of small quantities of halogenated materials and wondering if we could pick them up by XRF. If that was feasible it might have come to fruition now.
Doesn't help when you see the mentality of the people that gave evidence. Can't remember her name now but the jobs worth manager, who clearly shouldn't been in her role, despite the person she was involved in prosecuting having been found innocent. She still, at the enquiry kept mumbling without being asked, that she still thought they were guilty and that "The husband did it". Despite all the evidence showing it was the Horizon system. That is one of the main issues and sadly, people like that are still there. Unless they have a big clean out, all the "old guard" will still be there and still continue to defend and act like this. I saw this at the last place I was at until, finally, all the old guard was either pushed to retire or made redundant. All the old guard from the 80s acting like it was still the 70s with their "Its just banter innit. Oh she likes it, its just banter innit".
The Post Office does a lot more than DHL, UPS, FedEx. I recently needed three copies of my passport notarised as accurate for getting probate on my father's will. and estate, so I went to the local Post Office (£12.75). They also have a booth for taking photographs for passport applications, citizenship applications, indefinite leave to remain applications etc. currency exchange, plus, of course they still provide a service for pensioners, 'first day covers' for new issues of postage stamps (remember them?). And, of course the Post Office with Royal Mail has a national service obligation, i.e. to provide a service over the whole of the UK for the same price. So it may be a bit more complicated for the Post Office than for other letter and parcel delivery companies.
This is all true, and why the Post Office should be a public body. I mean really - even the USPO is run by the government (for the time being). What sort of country can't run it's own postal service FFS? They provide many important services.
But as far as EPOS goes... most of those things are just a service. You hae a button for "notarised passport" as a service, same as "B4 envelope", and it charges £12.75. Done. The staff need training, but any old EPOS could process the payment for it. The only thing that might be tricky is things like processing cheques, cash withdrawals, and pension services. But if needs be, the "financial services" could be on a parallel terminal from postal services or general sales.
Logging packages and parcels for things like Signed-For or special delivery options are a bit specialist, but nothing that every other courier doesn't also do.
"But if needs be, the "financial services" could be on a parallel terminal from postal services or general sales."
The thing is, there are a LOT of back-end services and not enough space for all the parallel terminals. It has to act as all those parallel terminals. I suppose these days a browser directly accessing all those back-ends would be the way to do it but the services would still have to be written by someone with a bit of programming nous, say enough to know not to commit half-complete transactions.
Passport applications aren't done with Horizon, or the Horizon computers, they're done on an off-the-shelf tablet with a semi-customised application. 95% of what is done on Horizon could be done with off-the-shelf generic PC hardware and off-the-shelf generic EPOS and accounting software. In fact, one of the first options considered for the Horizon replacement was just a generic off-the-shelf solution. But that was dismissed as "not invented here". So we contracted Fujitsu to write a replacement. Then decided to bring it in house. Then decided to outsource it somebody other than Fujitsu. Then decided to consider an off-the-shelf solution. Gaghh!!!!
Anon for obvious reasons. ;)
The Post Office could just buy the same software that other similar businesses use, like DHL, UPS, FedEx.
There's one teeny problem. The Post Office doesn't deliver/lose/mangle parcels or letters. Royal Fail does that. It isn't part of the Post Office any more.
A major retailer would be a similar business to the Post Office. Not the companies you mention. However the PoS and back-end IT systems used at Tesco (say) would need huge amounts of customisation and code rewriting so they'd be suitable for the Post Office's business. Which would mean the likes of Fujitsu get to charge gazillions to fuck it all up.
Can we see a case arising where the defence is that the PO *did* just rely on Horizon and Patterson takes the stand to formally declare (whether as a witness for the defence or as one for the prosecution that gets neatly cross-examined) that Horizon is an untrustworthy witness?
Which would basically translate to a boss admitting under oath that his product is rubbish.
Would we enter a Golden Age of Product Honesty[1]?
[1] No, we'd just see even more get outs in licence agreements and weasel clauses in contracts to the effect that they won't even back their product's ability to hold a stationery cupboard's door if you print the invoice, fold it up tight and stuff it in by the jamb.
You mean like a disclaimer on a statement of financial condition, being provided to a bank as evidence that the applicant isn't a bad credit risk, that says the valuation being presented may be dramatically off? (Translation of disclaimer - "don't trust anything you get from us".)
IIRC* it was the prosecution of Mr Castleton at the Old Bailey for the discrepancy of about £30,000 based on 'evidence' purely from Horizon that set the 'precedent' that Horizon's accounting was not contestable in court that allowed the Post Office to continue prosecutions without any other supporting evidence. His legal insurance hd been exhausted, so he had to defend himself in what is, I suspect, the most famous court building on Earth, a rather daunting prospect IMHO.
* From the excellent 'Mr Bates** vs the Post Office' ITV series, experts please correct me if I am wrong.
** Now Sir Alan Bates.
So could Fujshitu. They had an entire department cooking the books^w^w^w "fixing" the hundreds of errors Horizon was shitting out every day.
Fujshitsu's CEO-of-the-month saying he doesn't trust the Post Office with Horizon is like a gun manufacturer saying they don't trust their customers to use their products to shoot people or commit armed robbery.
When the majority of transactions were duplicate, it should have been very easy to sort this out. It should be very rare to see repeated transactions for the same amount, over and over again.
As I understand, significant amount of the complaints revolve around closing time calculations. The transactions would add up more than the take-in, and the difference would be requested from the postmaster. People lost everything they had trying to satisfy the 'system'. When they complained, the system was always perfect, the fault was always with the postmasters.
of one Assistant Postmaster who fell foul of Horizon.
In her case the PO got "witnesses" to say they had seen her passing money to "family" over the counter to account for the mythical "shortfall"
Odd that her family all lived hundreds of miles away and that she didn't ever pass money to anyone, yet Horizon maintained there was an issue...
Two options were presented by the PO either "'resign' and we will forget all about it" or "see us in court; p.s. we have better lawyers than you can ever hope to afford on the pittance we pay you". I guess that, as it was towards the point where Horizon issues became very public, the PO saw the writing on the wall.
Its not just what systems do with data but also what data is fed into them in the first place. Even if the Horizon computer software and system was 100% perfect (and it wasn't) there would still need to be data collected being properly input via the postmasters and used by them in the manner intended (as they did not use the system as per the operations manuals) and also to all the other systems, banking and otherwise, that it was linked to transferring data and thus monies correctly. It would appear that some monies in suspence accounts were not being allocated to the correct Post Office accounts both corporate and individual branches - for example there is a case where a Post office customer was given money supposedly from their bank account which somewhere amongst all the interlinked systems did not get deducted from the customers bank account, making the postmaster down on their till money as horizon said the money had not and should not have been paid out. In the Seema Misra court case some evidence was given that some balance failures occurred because the post mistress herself had not transerred monies to the post office from lottery sales correctly. In some cases balances were made whilst the Post Office was still trading, which meant discrepancies were inevitable and difficult to trace (the Postmasters access to the audit trail was abominable). Postmasters lying about money on hand did not help (they were legally committing false accounting) although I can understand why they felt they had to do this to continue trading as the Post Office had given them no other choice or reasonable way tho challenge the discrepancies. The word coercion (which think can be a defence at law) springs to mind.
Garbage in Garbage Out is true of all systems.
I'm not surprised that Fujitsu witness is saying the Post Office should not rely "solely" on Horizon data to support a prosecution..... it is "the complete supply chain that provides information to Horizon and actually to sub-postmasters themselves. You cannot rely solely… on one data source I would like to be satisfied that they are using more than just one data source, and (I've) not seen anything which tells me that they're using more than one data source," .
The entire system seems to be put down as Horizon without properly looking at all the other external factors causing any discrepancies. I'm sure many discrepancies were due to doubling up of transactions, Monies in suspense accounts not being correctly allocated and being allocated elsewhere (Perhaps as corporate profits) and "User error" and not fraud. The legal position "computer systems are always right unless proved otherwise" is also contributing to dubious prosecutions.
. . . but is there something unique about the UK's postal system that precludes them from using an off the shelf point of sale system?
UPS and FedEx, not to mention the US Postal Service, just to pull a few out of the air, all have systems that seem, at least to this casual observer, that work just dandy.
For all their faults, at least none of the above have been regularly sending their branch managers off to stony lonesome based upon dodgy softeare as far as I'm aware.
I mean the UK converted to a decimal currency decades ago, so pounds, shillings, and thruppence aren't a factor any longer, so color me baffled why the Post Office is still using Horizon instead of something easily available.
Perhaps someone can help me out there as to why Horizon is even a thing any more.
The Post Office doesn't just do post but also banking, lets you pay bills and many other things via its network of sub post offices so is basically a postal collection point, a bank and gives acces to some government services too from the same counter. It also used to pay out social benefits etc so it is very complicated what they do. The Post office may collect mail and parcels etc. but the delivery of these is via Royal Mail which was part of the same group when Horizon was implemented but is now separate.
So the Post office isn't the Postal/Delivery system like Royal Mail or UPS or Fedex but much more.
I'm not sure how this compares to the US.
Looking here https://www.postoffice.co.uk/ might help.
Maybe there is something easily available as a turnkey solution. Does anybody know?
Ah, thank you.
After I'd posted I thought I remembered that there is a postal savings plan of some sort in the UK. I believe we had something of that nature at one time in the States as well but that's long gone.
I listened to the entire BBC podcast series on the scandal but they never really explained why a bespoke system might be needed in the first place.
Thanks for the education.
Thank you both for the polite and informative discussion. Normally it's the one replying to the question who calls the poster an ignorant _____ (or worse), and the original poster touting the superiority of their country's system. Instead you two kept it civil and respectful. Great job.
Judging by some of the recently reported behaviours there is still rampant disavowal of responsibility and obstruction of remedy. Something more forceful - such as application of a hob-nailed boot - is needed.
I saw something recently where the PO was saying that compensation delays were being caused by the lawyers they instructed taking a ‘conventional legalistic approach’. Well instruct them differently or dismiss them!
I\\T service management\change control..Post Office asked Fujitsu to replicate a broken something (capture) many years ago, for legacy > modern..Post Office totally tested and signed off as working, Fujitsu support the signed off system to work as per client (Post Office) signoff
Aim all the faeces at Post Office for a base broken system. As for proper iT, Fujitsu did what they were paid to do, Post Office said it was goodand accepted into normal service.
There is a case to be made that it should be men in blue coats and non-padded cells. The levels of cluelessness that some people are now claiming in their defence do not seem (credibly) consistent with them being highly skilled and intelligent folks who could justify their large pay packets. The obvious alternative explanation is "you turned a blind eye" and I think that case needs to be answered.
FJ shouldn't be trusted. They have dodgy AF HMRC contracts with a suspiciously high level of access to peoples tax records (that they don't need).
Wouldn't be surprised if Fujitsu were selling the data to Chinese or Russian scammers.
Also the fact that FJ were using Horizon to launder money. Massive financial errors let them get up to all sorts of illegal crap.
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