Fujitsu wins flood contract extension despite starring in TV drama about its failures
- Reference: 1704366006
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/04/fujitsu_flood_contract_extension/
- Source link:
Fujitsu bags £142M UK government work since Horizon probe announced [1]READ MORE
The Defra department [2]first awarded the Japanese tech maker the contract in 2016 in a deal worth an initial £4.6 million. The contract was centered on the provision of software and IT services.
In the wake of Storm Henk, the agency has this week issued [3]nearly 300 flood warnings for England alone .
In a recent [4]procurement notice , the Environment Agency (EA) said it had awarded three contracts under the initial framework agreement, with the remaining live contract set to expire in September 2025.
"Therefore, in the interests of transparency, the Environment Agency wishes to declare that the cumulative final value of the Future Flood Warnings System framework agreement is anticipated to be £19,500,000 with the contract expiring no later than 22nd December 2025," it said.
[5]
The government agency said it would shortly conclude a procurement for the successor arrangements for the Future Flood Warnings System framework agreement.
[6]
[7]
Search for that replacement – snappily called the Next Flood Warning System – began in April 2022, when the agency began an early engagement with suppliers. In December 2022, it published [8]a contract notice with the contract valued at £31.6 million over six years. It said invitations to tender or participate would be sent to selected suppliers by February 27, 2023, and vendors would have to maintain their bids for six months.
[9]Fujitsu-backed FDK claims nickel zinc batteries ready for use in UPSes
[10]Fujitsu says it can optimize CPU and GPU use to minimize execution time
[11]Fujitsu public cloud to be absorbed into main biz, then refreshed
[12]Fujitsu, RIKEN open Japan's first superconducting quantum 'puter to eggheads
The EA has already piloted the use of automated flood warnings, but [13]critics complained that warnings are issued when there are no floods and that some notices come too late, after areas are already under water.
Fujitsu has come under fire for its role in the Post Office Horizon scandal, the inquiry for which is ongoing. It has become one of the UK's greatest miscarriages of justice after hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted for financial crimes early in the century. In 2019, the High Court case showed that Fujitsu's Horizon system contained errors that could have caused unexplained losses.
The scandal's profile is sufficient to merit its own [14]TV drama , which began broadcasting this week.
[15]
The screening prompted broadcast journalist Michael Crick to [16]tweet : "Given Fujitsu's role in creating the deeply flawed Horizon computer system at the heart [of] the postmasters' scandal, it would be interesting to know if the British government is still awarding them contracts. If so, why?"
A collective sigh from computer industry watchers up and down the UK was almost audible. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/fujitsu_gets_142_million_uk/
[2] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:014015-2016:TEXT:EN:HTML
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67870028
[4] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/037988-2023
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZZbkPyk7BS90zuXJZOL-pQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZZbkPyk7BS90zuXJZOL-pQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZZbkPyk7BS90zuXJZOL-pQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/034413-2022
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/fujitsubacked_fdk_wants_nickel_zinc/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/13/fujitsu_adaptive_gpu/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/30/asia_tech_news_in_brief/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/fujitsu_riken_quantum_supercomputer_live/
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/04/englands-automated-flood-warning-system-to-stay-despite-inaccuracy-warnings
[14] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67861886
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZZbkPyk7BS90zuXJZOL-pQAAAQg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/1741938378931646635
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Historical effects.
Apart from the crap car offered
Today you are lucky if you get £50 towards a new bicycle.
I might have to join a union
Well, if more IT workers joined unions we most likely wouldn't have crap salaries we have today.
Re: Historical effects.
Which unions would you recommend for IT workers?
Re: Historical effects.
I believe Fujitsu also made the computer system the DWP used to identify benefit claimants who were supposedly not in the UK during Covid so that their benefits could be clawed back. Naturally this has been a massive fuckup and stung innocent people.
Re: Historical effects.
Fun Fact: Allegations abound that Fujitsu STOLE almost £780 million of the unpaid state pensions by simply withholding money until people were dead.
Once you have sufficient data, its very easy to find those vulnerable people near end-of-life, without relatives that will complain, and simply steal their penions, redirecting the money into execs bank accounts.
Flood Warning
>snappily called the Next Flood Warning System
Which, presumably, arrives just after the Last Flood Warning System is forgotten?
Horizon
What appears to be coming out in the wash is that although Horizon was not reliable, the main cause of losses was the overnight corrections made by Fujitsu employees even though the Post Office stated several times that remote access to PO systems was impossible.
Re: Horizon
Exactly so.
Also the ability to falsify the audit trail - as the logins appeared to be the poor old postmaster. That sounds a lot like conspiracy to defraud and false accounting to me.
Failure of mainstream media.
While el reg,computer weekly and (god bless them) private eye all plugged away at exposing the vicious lies, false accusations and cover ups by the Post Office and Fujitsu the mainstream media was silent.
Only when convictions were overturned some 10 years later was there any coverage in the national newspapers or TV news.
Perhaps someone could call out the smug presenters on ITV's good moaning britain, they seem to monitor. Thier X feed.
So if any of you still have an X account give it a go.
A longish stretch, but...
Having just read "His Majesty's Airship", I'm struck by similarities between 1930's R.101 airship crash and the Horizon fiasco. These are all failures of the respective project managements. In both cases the management failure to see and deal with problems such as inadequate or omitted testing before putting the respective projects into service are quite striking.
At least the R.101 crash eliminated virtually all those responsible for causing the crash (they were on board it at the time) while their Horizon equivalents seem to have got away without any penalties.
Historical effects.
Fujitsu rebranded our less then wonderful computing company ICL in 2002.
When I was in IBM I was approached to join ICL. Apart from the crap car offered and less than sparkling pay package, I was also informed that I might have to join a union. At that point I declined the offer.
I think Fujitsu was also blamed for a DWP problem over more than £1bn of state pensions not being paid.
Why does our Government still use them at all?