In the brief couple of weeks considering that the Post Office public query adjourned for Christmas, the nationwide state of mind around the scandal has actually altered drastically. When Sir Wyn Williams assembles stage 4 of the statutory query on 11 January, the concentrate on the hearings will be higher than ever, thanks to the unbelievable effect of the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Officebroadcast in the very first week of the brand-new year.
For the very first time because hearings begun in early 2022, the eyes of nationwide media will be all over procedures. The concerns that the procedure looks for to address– who was accountable for the scandal, how did it take place, and who understood? — have actually ended up being subjects of nationwide argument like never ever in the past.
For the very first time, particularly extreme attention will be paid to Fujitsu, the provider of the questionable Horizon IT system accountable for defects that triggered accounting mistakes that were blamed on subpostmasters. On 16 January, witnesses from Fujitsu will take the stand, to deal with forensic questioning from the questions’s lawyers.
The UK federal government is now discussing requiring Fujitsu to add to the most likely ₤ 1bn payment costs for victims of the scandal. Already, the Japanese giant has actually been mostly quiet on its function in the scandal that started with the roll-out of Horizon to about 19,000 Post Office branches from 1999.
Because Computer system Weekly initially exposed the scandal in 2009Fujitsu has actually mainly decreased to comment. More just recently, as nationwide outrage has actually grown, it sends a basic declaration to the media, apologising for its function in the scandal, assuring to support the query, however including it will state absolutely nothing even more up until the query is total. MPs are wishing to alter that by welcoming executives to respond to concerns in Parliament this month.
2 Fujitsu workers have actually been under examination by the Metropolitan Police considering that 2020 over possible perjury throughout lawsuit that founded guilty innocent Post Office supervisors– based upon proof that emerged throughout the 2018/19 High Court case that showed Horizon was accountable for the mistakes that resulted in thousands being incorrectly implicated. No charges have actually yet been brought.
Much has actually been exposed about the culture of the Post Office when Horizon was presented– how its auditors presumed subpostmasters experiencing issues were “on the fiddle” or “in a muddle”, which accounting mistakes just served to verify the predisposition and presumptions in the organisation that branch supervisors had actually been preparing the books for several years before their paper-based approaches were automated.
What about Fujitsu? If it was an ideal storm of conditions that caused the Post Office scandal, what was the cultural weather condition like in the provider at the time Horizon was being established and carried out?
The Pathway to a scandal
Fujitsu’s participation started in 1996 when ICL, then 80% owned by the Japanese company, won a ₤ 1bn agreement to automate the advantages system. The job, called Pathwaywas granted collectively by the Department for Social Security (DSS)– a predecessor to today’s Department for Work and Pensions– and the Post Office.
Path nearly instantly strike issues. In 1996, ICL proposed a smartcard system, however the Post Office and DSS firmly insisted the system ought to be created to utilize older, more recognized magnetic strip innovation as a stepping stone to a complete smartcard system. The outcome was a series of missed out on due dates, with providers and clients blaming each other for hold-ups.
In December 1997, ICL stated that if the job were to continue it would either need to increase costs by 30% or extend the agreement by 5 years and raise costs by 5%, according to a National Audit Office report in 2000. A House of Commons committee report into Pathway later on stated the job was “blighted from the start” and identified it”the biggest IT catastrophe ever for the federal government.
In 1999, the federal government ditched the advantages component of the task, however rather granted ICL a ₤ 900m fixed-price agreement to computerise the Post Office branch network– which ended up being referred to as Horizon.
In 2000, the Post Office likewise exposed a ₤ 571m charge on its books brought on by ditching Pathway. Unions representing subpostmasters feared that the cancellation of the task would result in the closure of rural branches.
The Horizon agreement was revealed the day before ICL stated its yearly outcomes, that included a ₤ 180m write-off brought on by its losses on Pathway, and was commonly viewed to have actually been granted to assist ICL– a substantial federal government IT provider– to reduce those Pathway losses.
By that time, ICL had actually ended up being a completely owned subsidiary of Fujitsu, however was working towards a really public flotation of the business, due to occur by the end of 2000, that was anticipated to worth ICL at ₤ 5bn.
We have actually because found out, thanks to proof throughout the Post Office questions, that Fujitsu executives in Japan pushed the UK federal governmentunder prime minister Tony Blair, to concur the Horizon offer to change Pathway, following rumours the brand-new UK administration was thinking about ending the agreement.
In 1998, following a conference in between the British ambassador to Japan and Fujitsu executives, the British embassy in Tokyo composed to the federal government caution of severe financial consequences, consisting of UK task losses and decreases in trade, if Fujitsu/ICL’s software application agreement with the Post Office was cancelled.
The Fujitsu executive in charge of ICL informed the ambassador that “failure of the job will have severe effects for Fujitsu’s worldwide standing … [leading] to significant internal troubles within Fujitsu and the collapse of ICL.”
In the state of mind
Think of, then, the state of mind within ICL in the duration in the past, throughout and after the roll-out of Horizon started in 1999.
ICL’s owners had actually threatened the UK federal government with closure of the provider– whose innovation was then running the whole nation’s tax and advantages systems.
ICL’s board was extremely concentrated on getting the business all set for a stock exchange float that would, undoubtedly, have actually been financially rewarding for lots of senior executives, in addition to moms and dad Fujitsu.
And right in the middle of all that, the provider was required to cross out ₤ 180m for its function in the most significant federal government IT catastrophe the UK had actually seen– with all the prominent negative promotion that chooses it.
When it was presented, Horizon was explained by Fujitsu as the “biggest non-military IT system in Europe”. All eyes were on the job. Its client, the Post Office, remained in no state of mind to be informed that its essential IT system was not fit for function.
The culture all of that assisted to produce within the Horizon advancement group was exposed by a previous Fujitsu expert, who spoke with Computer Weekly in 2021The senior designer, who dealt with the task in between 1998 and 2000, stated, “Everybody in the structure by the time I arrived understood [Horizon] was a bag of shit. It had actually gone through the test laboratories God understands the number of times, and the testers were raising bugs by the thousand.”
He stated Horizon needs to “never ever have actually seen the light of day” which managers at provider Fujitsu permitted it to be presented into the Post Office network in spite of being informed it did not work properly and might not be repaired.
Money account issues
The designer particularly highlighted failures in a function called the money account – the journal where all money deals are tape-recorded. He made his superiors at Fujitsu familiar with the degree of the issues, informing them clearly that the money account required to be ditched.
“You’ve got to toss the money account away and you’ve got to reword it,” he stated.
As we now understand, improperly tape-recorded money deals lay at the heart of the accounting deficiencies that caused subpostmasters being mistakenly prosecuted by the Post Office.
No one at or near the top of Fujitsu/ICL desired to hear bad news about its greatest, highest-profile job– one that had actually currently almost broken the business– and particularly not while it was rundown the City in preparation for making ₤ 5bn from a stock market listing.
The ICL flotation was ultimately ditched in August 2000 as tech stocks plunged in the dot com crash.
In November 2000, the author of this post, composing then for Computing publication, exposed that ICL’s losses had actually trebled in the very first half of the year. New CEO Richard Christou– who took control of after the stopped working flotation resulted in the resignation of his predecessor, Keith Todd– informed workers that the business would not have the ability to make it through without Fujitsu.
In the middle of cautions of task cuts, Christou stated at the time, “If we were not supported by Fujitsu at this minute, the business would not have the ability to continue its company, and none of our workers would have any tasks at all.” This might have been news to staff members, however the conference room would have understood it was coming for numerous months.
In April 2002, the now-toxic ICL brand name was ditched. The business was relabelled at first as Fujitsu Services, and later on simply Fujitsu. In 2014, the ICL hallmark and brand name was gotten by an IT and electrical gadget repair work company in Kidsgrove, Stoke-on-Trent.
Concerns to address
When Fujitsu agents deal with the Post Office query in the coming weeks, there will no doubt be concerns asked regarding why no one in Fujitsu spoke out as soon as subpostmasters began being implicated of theft and scams. Why no one spoke out when Computer Weekly exposed the very first victims in 2009 – the questions has actually heard that Fujitsu personnel checked out the post in what was then a print publication, extensively distributed amongst IT advancement groups.
And why no one in Fujitsu spoke out as the scandal gradually concerned the attention of nationwide media in subsequent years– with the honourable exception of Richard Roll, the whistleblower who exposed that remote access to branch accounts prevailed practice, regardless of the Post Office’s persistence that it was not possible.
According to figures from public procurement expert TussellFujitsu has actually won almost 200 agreements from the UK public sector with a combined worth of ₤ 6.78 bn– the Post Office Horizon agreement stays its most significant, valued at almost ₤ 2.4 bn consisting of a ₤ 36m extension to keep the IT system going up until 2025
Naturally, none of this describes why the Post Office carried out a 20-year project of prosecuting individuals for criminal offenses that never ever occurred, and after that lying and concealing the fact.
When taking a look at Fujitsu’s function in the Post Office scandal, it’s possible to recognize its roots in a multimillion-pound loss occurring from an earlier IT task catastrophe. Some advocates may, for that reason, delight in a welcome paradox in the possibility of Fujitsu needing to make a multimillion-pound contribution to the payment fund for the victims.
– Also checked out: What you require to learn about the Horizon scandal –
– Watch: ITV’s Post Office scandal documentary,Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The genuine story –