Post Office scandal

[stonerblue]

Is this the right time to say I used to work for Fujitsu?

Thankfully one guy that did was prepared to stand up in court and testify.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

The main problem was/is the fact that the Post Office undertake their own investigations and prosecutions. They will have known that there was a problem but they chose to ignore it.
If nothing else they need to be stripped of the right to investigate their own.

A bit like the police service then?

 

[TheBlueDune]

only if you weren't involved in Horizon.

Clearly with hindsight, there was some significant arse covering going on for many years by Fujitsu and the Post Office for different reasons - but this has resulted in honest peoples' lives being destroyed or even ended - there need's to be people going to prison for significantly long terms over this, whether they are still employed by those organisations or not - in some ways it's like a rapist/killer being caught years later by new techniques not possible at the time, there is no escape there, there should be no escape here.

I've worked in Enterprise IT for over 30 years (not for Fujitsu I might add) and I'll be honest, I don't think I could have kept my mouth shut for so long if I had been involved and knew about the possibilities of failure in the Horizon system (and the resultant impact) - I have been caught in a few scrapes (not of my making mind, but I was the whistleblower) which have resulted in 'for the tape please state your name and role' interviews with Government Investigators which resulted in an article on the front page of the News of The World! You HAVE to have morals and be totally honest and open in these situations.

BTW if anyone knows the technical details of the issues, I'd love to know what they were - if only to use an example of how IT stuff goes bad... really bad.

If I had to guess, I'd bet on a testing strategy that relied on sample testing and an acceptance level that was "passed" as ok. Maybe 99% pass being acceptable.

I ran a new payroll project with 30,000 people paid every month. I insisted we did a 100% test - we simulated the payroll for all 30,000. We found that hundreds had been wrongly paid in the old system but didn't know. Some overpaid and some underpaid.

My view was that if one person was paid wrong in the new system, it wasn't a 1/30000 failure ... for that person it was a 100% failure and we weren't going to accept it.

So whose fault? The post office for choosing a critical system on price even though they would have had a weighted evaluation based on a set of criteria. The post office for signing off acceptance of the new system. The post office for choosing to ignore reported faults. The post office for covering up.
Fujitsu for being unprofessional.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Gord, you dont mind me calling you Gord do you ?
Your knowledge of this is far better than mine so please forgive my ignorance but..
Your case may not have been a criminal prosecution but some were surely ? They went to prison so what am I missing ?

I’m just qualifying what I said based on my own dealings. I know people who were prosecuted and convicted and sent down - and it completely ruined their lives but I had no direct involvement in that.

 

[Blue Mist]

A bit like the police service then?

Nothing like them. The police investigate criminal offences but then have to put their case to an independent body, the CPS.
If you are talking about internal investigations there is an external independent body that investigate the police.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Nothing like them. The police investigate criminal offences but then have to put their case to an independent body, the CPS.
If you are talking about internal investigations there is an external independent body that investigate the police.

I'm referring to police conduct.

As far as I'm aware serious misconduct is only externally independently investigated if there is a complaint raised, and that disciplinary/misconduct matters can still be dealt with internally?

 

[Tuearts right boot]

Even to the untrained eye how can the 500 or so Postmasters all be guilty of the same crime all more or less at the same time, surely basic common sense tells you differently.

 

[Blue Mist]

I'm referring to police conduct.

As far as I'm aware serious misconduct is only externally independently investigated if there is a complaint raised, and that disciplinary/misconduct matters can still be dealt with internally?

OK I accept that but i was referecing in the context of the post office being serious conduct. Yes minor issues are internally dealt with.
I still can't believe, in the wake of Shipman, doctors still investigate themselves. (Not in the medical way though :-)