Horizon

[prpr]

What flavour pie?

Raspberry.

 

[MikeSh]

just that the BBC are making sure they get a slice of the pie.

Obviously. It is now a big story. I'm just sad/angry it's taken so long and a commercial drama to get some effective action taken about it.

 

[EEPhil]

Raspberry.

If only I had one. It might run faster than my laptop.

 

[MikeSh]

I seem to think it had been trailed for a long time.

There was a big article about it in Radio Times for the week, which must have been written and sent to the printers before Christmas, so it certainly wasn't a stealth operation.

 

[Black Hole]

In the BBC's favour I heard a Radio4 series about all this some time ago (I didn't see the Panorama exposé), but of course neither Panorama nor Radio4 will get the general public's attention.

Oh, and the moment somebody says "no minutes to be taken" you just know there's something fishy going on and anybody claiming to be honest shouldn't touch that with a barge pole.

 

[SemiRamis]

Smacks of PR finding a use to show how good it will be for us rather than how good it will be for them.

Can't believe that the most important reason for this change has been missed out by everybody.

The millions if not billions of stamps which have now become useless and also pure profit for the RM.

The exchange system must be infinitesimal. None, none of my friends have said they exchanged anything

 

[mike_m]

I might be being cynical here, but that article reads much like Daily Mail articles bigging up their role in one expose or another. I'm not saying it's inaccurate, just that the BBC are making sure they get a slice of the pie.

Hmmm... I was ready to think the same, but I'm not so sure. The BBC were faced with intimidation and threats from the Post Office's lawyers and senior management for some time - it's clear that Paula V and the PO board saw the BBC as their chief enemy back in 2015. In spite of this, the Panorama editors successfully got the important facts (including Fujitsu's remote access) into the 2015 programme. It's unfortunate that it failed to ignite public opinion, but that says more about the us, the viewing public, than it does about the BBC's investigative competence.

 

[MikeSh]

None, none of my friends have said they exchanged anything

Did they try? It's not as if it wasn't publicised.

 

[Black Hole]

I see no reason people should have been left with useless stamps, unless they had their heads firmly in the sand. And I've received post since with old-style stamps, so they were not cut off even after the deadline. Anyway, what twit stock-piles stamps? If you buy up a load as a hedge against price increases, there's a risk you'll lose out by not ending up using them. And if you've bought them up to sell, well more fool you!

It would be nice to be able to take stamps to a PO and have them exchanged there and then, but that would throw the onus onto PO staff to tell they were not forgeries (the very problem the bar-coded stamps are supposed to address).

As it happens, I kept some deliberately. The Welsh definitives are a dragon for 1st class and a (less attractive) leek for 2nd, and I did not expect the RM to issue bar-coded versions of the same... but they have!

 

[Brian]

Anyway, what twit stock-piles stamps? If you buy up a load as a hedge against price increases, there's a risk you'll lose out by not ending up using them. And if you've bought them up to sell, well more fool you!

I'm not sure what counts as a stock pile, but in May I exchanged 110 off 1st class stamps under the "Swap Out" scheme.

These stamps were purchased back when 1st class letter price was around 30p, and many were purchased from Superdrug, who were offering a 10% discount on the cost of the stamps.

 

[hazfiend]

There have been some cases that have already gone to appeal where the Judge has claimed that the evidence doesn't support the claim that they were prosecuted due to deficiencies in the Horizon system, and the original prosecution has been allowed to stand. However I would be very wary of saying that the persons involved were actually guilty as i wouldn't trust any evidence from the Horizon system.

Obviously any significant computer sytem contains bugs, but it's not usually a good idea to simply discard all the data.

Before horizon, how many people were being prosecuted each year for embezzlement? The numbers being prosecuted after Horizon went live must have raised eyebrows somewhere at the huge increase in numbers.

The system was designed to detect frauds that were currently going unobserved so this could be seen as beneficial.

There have been items in the on-line newspapers this week about people getting cash bonuses for each prosecution.

This is the part that I have a bit of a problem with. Lots of people are pointing the finger as Fujitsu who are completely not the problem.

Some background, for a long time there was a big computer company in the UK called ICL, formed from a number of smaller British computer companies e.g. ICT, English Electric Computers, etc, much like BAe, British Leyland, etc. Being the only large British computer company, it should be obvious that the government would be generally disposed to award contracts to ICL as it kept thousands of staff employed in the UK paying taxes, etc. Being a big British company it also had problems much like BL did and around the time of Horizon, ICL was steadily going bankrupt.

Horizon was set up by ICL employees in order to provide the computerised services for the post office, I knew the project manager who led the bid team that won the contract for ICL (as part of a consortium of companies capable of delivering the services). It was part of the arrangements for meeting the tender and doing things the way POCL wanted things done. Similar to the approach to the National Lottery, where Camelot were set up as a company owned by the consortium who ran the bid for running it. Not unusually, ICL were part of that consortium and delivered all the point of sale terminals that are installed in newsagents and thing for selling tickets (also run in much the same way and with some of the same staff.)

Around that time, a bit before I think, ICL was taken over by Fujitsu and became Fujitsu ICL for a bit. There were parts not under the Fujitsu label e.g. ICL Defence Systems (based in Winnersh as I recall) was kept separate because Japanese companies weren't allowed to deal with military ventures (WW2 history thing, I think). Pretty sure Horizon would have come under the Fujitsu umbrella, i.e. any profits or losses would fetch up in the Fujitsu accounts. I doubt ICL would have been able to pay the vast penalty clauses that were in the contract, (I recall joking about it being potentially a bigger financial loss than Nick Leeson managed to bring down Barings Bank with).

The project was run in the usual way with ICL staff (probably wearing Fujitsu/ICL ID badges by then) initially in Feltham with the various subcontractors as specified in the successful bid, as I recall Esher (an American company) were the people doing the accountancy package which sat in the middle of the system and replaced the existing system of bits of paper, daily accounts, ledgers, car tax application forms, pension books, etc. From what I remember the majority of it was pensions and benefits.

There is no way ICL would be getting extra money for unfairly sacking postmasters - that would be completely implausible and I doubt anyone would bid for such a contract because it would have "massive scandal" written all over, with contractually-binding smoking guns written into it. It would also be irrational for POCL to dispose of staff that they would then have to replace. Equally well I doubt POCL would attempt to steal their staff's savings by some sort of fraudulent system. What went wrong would be that the POCL project management and Horizon created an issue, specifically (a) software which didn't work properly - I have no idea why the bugs weren't picked up and fixed, but I've yet to see a big software development that didn't have any bugs. (b) some sort of belief within POCL that the system was perfect which led them to assume that any shortfalls must be fraud. I would speculate that since the system was designed to catch fraud, and that POCL would have imagined (or known) that remote postmasters were in a great position to have e.g. phantom benefit claimants and so forth and some would be on the fiddle. It's quite possible they saw this as the system working correctly - again, I don't know how this came about, normally there is ongoing software maintenance, auditing, etc, where discrepancies would be discovered and new versions of the code produced to fix these.

For obvious reasons, it would be necessary to know whether bad figures were coming out due to software errors or actual fraud, I would suggest the courts were and are a very poor way to tell the difference there and doing proper financial auditing to see why there isn't the right amount of money in the safe at the end of the month would have been a much better way to go about things. Blind faith in a computer system (particularly a new one) is as bad as blind distrust of one. Some of the descriptions of the bugs suggest they are hard to catch during testing, e.g. one seems to have been that the EPOS would take a transaction (e.g. Billy bought a stamp) and send that to the server (which sounds like it was in Lovelace Road by then, judging by the Panorama "expose"), which would record the transaction and somehow the receipt message back to the EPOS didn't get through, e.g. it timed out if the system was busy. The EPOS wouldn't clear (not been confirmed) and the staff would press the button again, and again, until it did. In the database, it seems Billy bought 2, 3, 16 stamps but there's only 25p in the till. Where did the rest of the money go? It was never there in the first place. The testers would merely run one transaction, Billy bought 1 stamp, the database says there should be 25p in the till, test successful. It takes someone to realise that you're getting duplicate transactions recorded for this to be picked up and it may well not happen until the system is live, and heavily loaded. It needs someone to hear there is a disputed discrepancy and investigate the data to see there are 16 stamps separately recorded and realise this is a dupe, maybe ask how many stamps were actually bought / left in the sub post office.

Why nobody was doing that is a mystery to me.

What I find extraordinary is the idea that anyone was doing something deliberately / huge conspiracy / database admin fiddling the figures on the central database. It is just about feasible that one or a team of fraudsters working in BRA01 were somehow extracting cash from POCL and making the figures appear to point to the post offices but I don't see how POCL would be sending the extra money to some third party, and in any case it should be picked up when their accounts get audited by PWC or whoever, someone will ask "why are you paying £450,231.81 to a private individual who isn't a supplier, employee, or contractor in Basingstoke?" As far as I can tell, the "shortfalls" were imaginary in most cases and the post office would have the correct number of stamps left, the correct amount of money in the till for the stamps that had been sold, and the 15 extra stamps in the database are a bug, not reflecting reality. Then, of course, if you are the POCL investigators, you discover this and that you've banged up a load of innocent employees, you might want to cover it up or something. I don't know the actual guilty party here but it's neither the woman being the figurehead of POCL at the time, nor Fujitsu per se, which appear to be the villains as far as the press are concerned. And I think it is just typical incompetance and misunderstandings getting out of hand, with dire consequences for the poor victims who got caught up in it all.

 

[Black Hole]

Thanks for writing that up, but it doesn't seem to account for the apparent case that there exist internal documents which show the shortcomings were known but prosecutions went ahead regardless. Audits carried out at POs in the manner you describe revealed there were no shortfalls, but those audits were suppressed. And deleting emails and shredding minutes. So yes, the figureheads at POCL do have some explaining to do, even if that is only for demanding the answers they personally wanted to hear and surrounding themselves with yes-men (and sacking / moving sideways personnel who were trying to get to the truth). Hell, they tried to trash the external investigators when those investigators got too close, and tried to scuttle the trial. This is not honesty at work, it's trying to avoid the consequences of being found guilty.

What about the continual denials that Fujitsu/ICL had access to the PoS systems? Fujistu/ICL knew they did, and said nothing when POCL claimed they didn't. So Fujitsu/ICL are at the very least guilty of not speaking up.

What kind of accounting system doesn't do double entry book-keeping, and what sort of inexperienced systems engineer assumes a long-distance communications system transfers all packets perfectly without building in fall-backs? Who was reviewing and overseeing this work? It all seems very amateurish, and that is firmly at Fujitsu/ICL's door. Why did the sub-postmasters, who were required to sign off the accounts, not have at least read access to their master accounts held at head office? If I were expected to sign in blood, I would expect at least the facility to review the detail of what I was signing up to.

 

[Black Hole]

I'm not sure what counts as a stock pile, but in May I exchanged 110 off 1st class stamps under the "Swap Out" scheme.

These stamps were purchased back when 1st class letter price was around 30p, and many were purchased from Superdrug, who were offering a 10% discount on the cost of the stamps.

So you've had a long-term investment in stamps on the presumption prices would exceed inflation (a reasonably safe bet) and the presumption you would actually get through them all under non-contrived circumstances? OK, whatever floats your boat.

I'm surprised about the discount, I didn't think retailers could do that.

 

[Brian]

So you've had a long-term investment in stamps on the presumption prices would exceed inflation (a reasonably safe bet) and the presumption you would actually get through them all under non-contrived circumstances? OK, whatever floats your boat.

I'm surprised about the discount, I didn't think retailers could do that.

I was using more stamps back when they were originally purchased, but now I’m lucky to use two or three stamps per year. I have since reduced my stock by giving away almost two thirds of them to family members.

Searching online brings up a few historic references to Superdrug offering a 5% discount on stamps, so I may have been mistaken when I thought it was 10%.

 

[hazfiend]

Thanks for writing that up, but it doesn't seem to account for the apparent case that there exist internal documents which show the shortcomings were known but prosecutions went ahead regardless. Audits carried out at POs in the manner you describe revealed there were no shortfalls, but those audits were suppressed. So yes, the figureheads at POCL do have some explaining to do, even if that is only for demanding the answers they personally wanted to hear and surrounding themselves with yes-men (and sacking / moving sideways personnel who were trying to get to the truth). Hell, they tried to trash the external investigators when those investigators got too close, and tried to scuttle the trial. This is not honesty at work, it's trying to avoid the consequences of being found guilty.

All that would be internal to POCL. As I hope I indicated, I see the problem as being essentially within POCL but have no insight into what they would have been getting up to.

From the POV of ICL/Fujitsu, it's quite possible POCL asked about whether there could be bugs, anyone with any sense would say "yes there will be". Maybe they asked someone who didn't have any sense and got an answer that sent them down a doomed path to scandal. There does appear to be some sort of disconnect because ICL appear to have said they told POCL about issues but POCL never got back to them. Maybe because they would have said "and we would need to be paid as you didn't agree a maintenance contract for ongoing support" and POCL decided it would be easier to just ignore the bugs, all kinds of things might have happened.

What about the continual denials that Fujitsu/ICL had access to the PoS systems? Fujistu/ICL knew they did, and said nothing when POCL claimed they didn't. So Fujitsu/ICL are at the very least guilty of not speaking up.

I don't know the exact arrangements. For the parallel example of EPOS terminals and a central server, as Client Server architecture was and still is pretty standard, Camelot has a computer system and many terminals all around the country. The central system would be one or more physical servers connected to what was originally telephone lines with modems but by now will probably be via the internet. Someone, somewhere is responsible for replacing failed disks, bring hot standby on and offline, etc, these people always have physical access to the system and can examine and alter the data in the database because they need to in order to do their job (database / server admin).

There would usually be some sort of security system in place so that people can't wander in off the street and probably an auditing system (named people accessing given systems having logged in with their authenication (probably OTP based these days rather than a password). Even when the system is held securely by the customer, if I was the designer and they want me to fix problems, they're going to have to let me onsite to access the server, most likely the database itself or the code that drives it all. Chances are they have their own staff to swap failed components and similar.

They might also have hired me to write the software and they would take it on, test it, and once satisfied pay me and "contract fulfilled." Then I have no access to the system unless they decide to hire me again (e.g. their in-house staff haven't figured out their new 80 column printer is only printing 77 characters per line, and the report form they specify, will not fit as they used the full 80 like the orginal printer supported. (Yes this really happened with the Navy).

As to whether Fujitsu had access to the database, that's a matter of public record. If POCL took the server farm in house and hired their own staff to maintain it, then they could deny Fujitsu access. If they decided to pay Fujitsu to maintain the server farm (as seems to be the case, and would be normal enough) then Fujitsu has full control of the database. This particular question has the feel of being made up, i.e. Fujitsu are secretly accessing the system and could have fiddled the figures. Why do that? The number of stamps (physical reality) in a post office won't match what the system says should be there, and the amount of money in the till won't be right either. But you can't steal the stamps or the money this way so what's the point?

What kind of accounting system doesn't do double entry book-keeping, and what sort of inexperienced systems engineer assumes a long-distance communications system transfers all packets perfectly without building in fall-backs? Who was reviewing and overseeing this work? It all seems very amateurish, and that is firmly at Fujitsu/ICL's door.

I was using a simple description for something which might have been too complicated to understand. Not knowing exactly what the bugs were I can't do more than that.

Why did the sub-postmasters, who were required to sign off the accounts, not have at least read access to their master accounts held at head office? If I were expected to sign in blood, I would expect at least the facility to revieww the detail of what I was signing up to.

No idea, a lot of the POCL standard operating procedures seemed very strange.

 

[hazfiend]

I'm not sure what counts as a stock pile, but in May I exchanged 110 off 1st class stamps under the "Swap Out" scheme.

These stamps were purchased back when 1st class letter price was around 30p, and many were purchased from Superdrug, who were offering a 10% discount on the cost of the stamps.

As a spooky coincidence, having done much the same thing back when "first class" became a stamp price, and it being obvious that the price increases would exceed inflation, I have used the last two of my barcoded replacements just today, to post a couple of letters which are waiting to go to the letterbox tonight

I also like my gas meter readings to be estimated, so I can control when to bring them back in line with reality (when the unit price is at a lower point).

 

[Black Hole]

@hazfiend it seems to me you've either not watched the recent dramatic reconstruction, or believed it to be fiction! A lot of the details you believe unknown were thoroughly aired, with the evidence for them.

 

[hazfiend]

@hazfiend it seems to me you've either not watched the recent dramatic reconstruction, or believed it to be fiction! A lot of the details you believe unknown were thoroughly aired, with the evidence for them.

Not watched. Not much point when I was there, particularly when it seems at least one of the non-fictional revelations is meaningless in the first place (Fujitsu having access to the server they are contracted to maintain).

 

[MikeSh]

Why nobody was doing that is a mystery to me.

Because of project timelines and costs. There's (almost*) never enough in the contract to thoroughly test before going live, and once it's live no-one want to mess it all up.

I spent a decade or two in control engineering. I've pointed out bugs written into the specification we were given only to be told to code it per the specs. In one case come commissioning the same manager that told me that was having a fit because several £k of the customer's product was ruined by that bug.

( * There usually is in pharmaceutical jobs.)

 

[hazfiend]

Because of project timelines and costs. There's (almost*) never enough in the contract to thoroughly test before going live, and once it's live no-one want to mess it all up.

I spent a decade or two in control engineering. I've pointed out bugs written into the specification we were given only to be told to code it per the specs. In one case come commissioning the same manager that told me that was having a fit because several £k of the customer's product was ruined by that bug.

( * There usually is in pharmaceutical jobs.)

There was enough money to investigate and prosecute postmasters, which should have included some basic checking to see if the supposed fraud matched up to the reality of what the post office had actually done that day.

If it was under some sort of maintenance contract, the contractee does that to be able to answer your questions.

These aren't change control or optional.

I'd be most vexed if I got jailed for embezzlement when my books were pretty much adding up. At the very least I would run a week where I also operated my normal paper system that I'd used for years, in parallel with the new computerised system that was replacing it, and see if my figures matched the figures on the system. If not, I'm sending a stiff memo including the words "false accusations".