Post Office awards Fujitsu a £42.5m contract extension for the IT system behind wrongful subpostmaster prosecutions
- Reference: 1617791110
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/04/07/post_office_fujitsu_horizon_extension/
- Source link:
In December last year, [1]the Court of Appeal formally cleared six subpostmasters of criminal convictions including false representation, false accounting, fraud and theft. Some of their convictions date back to 2004.
[2]
The ruling followed an [3]October statement from the Post Office , which said it would not oppose 44 out of 47 appeals.
The Post Office had relied on evidence from its Fujitsu-made Horizon branch office management IT system when it privately prosecuted a large number of subpostmasters during the 2000s and early 2010s.
[4]
Though the system was known to throw up accounting errors, managers kept this from subpostmasters. Faced with large shortfalls between reported revenues and actual takings, some desperate subpostmasters resorted to putting their own money into their franchised branch offices to balance the books.
When Horizon continued to throw up discrepancies, Post Office managers accused subpostmasters of stealing money from the public-sector body. Private prosecutions and criminal convictions followed. At least one subpostmaster later committed suicide.
Exonerated: First subpostmasters cleared of criminal convictions in Post Office Horizon scandal [5]READ MORE
In October last year, [6]Parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee launched an inquiry into the Horizon IT court cases . It said in a statement it would return to the issues raised once the Independent Review into Post Office Ltd had been completed.
But for the time being, the Post Office and Horizon supplier Fujitsu have extended their relationship, which began in July 1999.
The Horizon Agreement for the provision of certain services, including services in respect of the HNG-X system, was set to expire on 31 March 2023.
"In order to prepare the Horizon Agreement for expiry and in order to receive transitional support from Fujitsu Services following such expiry, the Horizon Agreement will be extended for a term of an additional one year to 31st March 2024," the Post Office said in a [7]contract award notice . It also retains the option of a one-year extension with the Japanese supplier.
"In parallel, Post Office continues to revise and develop its system architecture and service delivery model," the notice said.
The Post Office offered further reasons for extending Fujitsu's Horizon deal.
According to the government-owned private company, Horizon is a "highly complex, legacy platform, written in outdated versions of software languages." It incorporates financial services, banking, government services, mails, and retail systems, and has "an inflexible monolithic architecture that makes technology change difficult."
"It was not designed for multi-channel digital operations," the notice said.
For "economic and technical reasons," the service could not be provided by any organisation other than the original contractor before the expiry of the Horizon Agreement "because of the specific interoperability requirements and the highly complex nature of the existing infrastructure and the Authority's business model and operating procedures," the Post Office said.
[8]
"A change of contractor would result in disproportionate technical difficulties in implementation as well as operation and maintenance." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/11/post_office_horizon_scandal_first_subpostmasters_cleared/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YG3XKEnialRbAPw04SuvkgAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54384427
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YG3XKEnialRbAPw04SuvkgAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/11/post_office_horizon_scandal_first_subpostmasters_cleared/
[6] https://committees.parliament.uk/work/97/post-office-and-horizon/news/119824/post-office-horizon-inquiry-update/
[7] https://find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/006992-2021
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YG3XKEnialRbAPw04SuvkgAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Big 'business' contract
'Look Sucker. You know the system is faulty, I know the system is faulty, your customers know the system is faulty. Even the Goddam government knows the system is faulty. But what's the alternative huh? You just gonna keep paper records of all those postage stamps you sell? Ha! Like that's gonna work!'
£42.5m
How much do the wrongfully accused/convicted get?
Re: £42.5m
SQRT(Jack-Shit) after Therium took their cut.
How much have PO spent on the scandal ? About £100 million last time I looked. Almost none of that getting to the wronged parties.
Monolithic
Probably describes the mental processes of the PO management equally as well as the system.
When you think there has been the best part of two decades to make the system more flexible and less monolithic, one can only think the management don't give a crap.
Re: Monolithic
Chris G : "When you think there has been the best part of two decades to make the system more flexible and less monolithic, one can only think the management don't give a crap."
Well, be fair, they've doubtless been 'advised' about upgrades by Fujitsu, who probably put their 'very best people' on the job*.
*The job being to retain the business despite their obvious failings.
Hmmm
Whats the betting the planning to get off of Horizon in the next 2 (now 3 years) hasn't even started yet?
So, let me summarize
For "economic and technical reasons," the service could not be provided by any organisation other than the original contractor before the expiry of the Horizon Agreement
Okay, sure, that part I can accept. It would be highly unreasonable to throw everything away and have operation grind to a halt while you commission Crapita (because who else ?) to develop an entirely new set of bugs.
So fine, ensure the maintenance of your buggy, mololithic, outdated system. Got it.
Meanwhile, now that you have ensured its continuance, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO REPLACE IT ? Now's the time. Throw another £100 million to somebody and get your non-monolithic, up-to-date, designed for multi-channel digital operations (do you really even know what that means ?), highly Agile system on its feet so that you can replace the dinosaur when the next end date expires.
Because 2024 is going to be here before you finish drawing up your next set of outdated specifications, I'll wager.
Schadenfreude fans can rejoice
Former Post Office director Angela van den Bogerd (the one who "misled" the court) was appointed as "Head of People " by the Football Association of Wales(FAW) last year. Since then the Chief Executive, Jonathan Ford, who appointed her has lost a no-confidence motion, been placed on gardening leave, and left the organisation. Van den Bogerd has not had her probationary period extended. See:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56444886
Ford had been in-post for 11 years.
Theres a good few high ups and previous high ups in the PO who really, really deserve jail time.
According to the Private Eye,
POST WASTE
Trashing its own reputation and mistreating sub-postmasters in the long running Horizon IT scandal has so far cost the Post Office a quarter of a billion pounds.
... it looks like it will cost more to cover up and then pay the lawyers (oh, and a small amount to the many victims whose lives have been ruined) than it would have cost to write a new system.
...and at a time when more and more sub-post offices are closing, who in their right mind would step forward to be responsible for a small business subject to the worst aspects of large organisation private and public ownership. What a clusterf@#~
Isn't that the point?
The Post Office wants to shut down all the actual post offices, and become an online block-chain driven hyper-fintech imagineerigg thought leader, and this is a cheap way of doing it
£42.5m What's that in easy to understand units?
About 10½ Vennells?