Horizon IT Scandal: Postmasters await justice today

[MarillionFan]

This was a very very interesting series to watch. I never took much cadence to this in the past but when I saw the show a number of things popped up for me.

My first IT contract was with the Royal Mail back in 1997/8 in Brighton. I got paid £225 a day to do reporting off a Royal Blue Helpdesk using Crystal Reports and as a young grad coming off a £25k a year salary this was mana from heaven.

It was also an eye-opener! First, Royal Mail was incompetent at IT. They promoted those internally who wanted to learn IT. So a postman could cross train and their management & staff had no idea about the outside world. As external I was the expert even though I was a graduate.

The Royal Mail launched my career in contracting! As a recent maths grad I was able to use their helpdesk system & additional skills I had to find that they had a £40M shortfall. I came to the light of PWC who were in as consultants & got hired by them as an 'expert' and they used me as an 'associate' which made me the hard arsed contractor I came on this group.

BUT! My next stint in 1999/2000 was with the National Programme For IT for the NHS! And that included Fujitsu among others! GDPR did not exist. Excess to remote sites . systems did and ******* about with live data or customer data did!

So in conclusion! Royal Mail IT Staff have no ******* clue. Companies like Fujitsu did whatever they wanted at the Database level to make tulip work as it was full of chancers) and a load of innocent people got ****ed over! And management in these companies are clueless ****s who cover their own arses. Should not be, but is.

[SueEllen]

This is why if a project is failing/screwed up you need to get off it asap.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ffice-scandal/

July 6 2023 was the day subpostmasters had waited for. Gareth Jenkins, the former Fujitsu employee and Horizon chief architect, was due to appear in front of the public inquiry for the first time.
Some convictions had been overturned, compensation schemes were up and running and all that was left was the hunt for justice. To find out what – and who – bankrupted and convicted innocent people.

[DoctorStrangelove]

And he's easy to find on Companies House. .

[Lance]

This was a very very interesting series to watch. I never took much cadence to this in the past but when I saw the show a number of things popped up for me.

My first IT contract was with the Royal Mail back in 1997/8 in Brighton. I got paid £225 a day to do reporting off a Royal Blue Helpdesk using Crystal Reports and as a young grad coming off a £25k a year salary this was mana from heaven.

It was also an eye-opener! First, Royal Mail was incompetent at IT. They promoted those internally who wanted to learn IT. So a postman could cross train and their management & staff had no idea about the outside world. As external I was the expert even though I was a graduate.

The Royal Mail launched my career in contracting! As a recent maths grad I was able to use their helpdesk system & additional skills I had to find that they had a £40M shortfall. I came to the light of PWC who were in as consultants & got hired by them as an 'expert' and they used me as an 'associate' which made me the hard arsed contractor I came on this group.

BUT! My next stint in 1999/2000 was with the National Programme For IT for the NHS! And that included Fujitsu among others! GDPR did not exist. Excess to remote sites . systems did and ******* about with live data or customer data did!

So in conclusion! Royal Mail IT Staff have no ******* clue. Companies like Fujitsu did whatever they wanted at the Database level to make tulip work as it was full of chancers) and a load of innocent people got ****ed over! And management in these companies are clueless ****s who cover their own arses. Should not be, but is.

it wasn't just Fujitsu that were this bad. All of the big SIs are just the same. It was the combination of huge IT project (it was huge at > 20k sites - that was more sites than the NHS when n3 was the largest civilian network after Indian trains), typical outsource chancers, terrible management at the customer, and the contracts with the sub-postmasters (making them an easy scapegoat).

[Eirikur]

Having contracted at Fujitsu in the early 2010s on a Post Ofiice project, I'm not surprised about the mess they find themselves in now . The project went live way too early and made some headlines at the time

[SueEllen]

Just heard the RSPCA set aside £50 million to privately criminally prosecute individuals.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Having contracted at Fujitsu in the early 2010s on a Post Ofiice project, I'm not surprised about the mess they find themselves in now . The project went live way too early and made some headlines at the time

Did it HCF like the bus? Us gammons got to know, man, we got to know.

[SueEllen]

Just a few threats -

BBC News - Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743

[cojak]

Tip of the hat to Richard Roll, I’m not sure that many of us would have done what he did - do the right thing despite the risk to his career.

[SueEllen]

Tip of the hat to Richard Roll, I’m not sure that many of us would have done what he did - do the right thing despite the risk to his career.

I thought he was retired which is why he spoke out. In fact he's a podiatrist in Wokingham. (Anyone in the area who needs their feet done you know where to go.)


https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/...-post-28392570

He's led an exciting life, starting out at the Royal Air Force (RAF), working as an IT specialist on the force's attack systems, then as a high level worker at Fujitsu and eventually breaking away completely to become a successful podiatrist.

.....

The judge, Peter Fraser, writes that Richard's career had actually started in the Royal Air Force, where he joined in 1976 and left in 1989. During his time there, he worked as an avionics engineer. His responsibilities included working on mainframe computer systems, the software development team and even on aircraft control and attack systems.

Afterwards, he worked in various development and support roles until his time at Fujitsu began in January 2001. Richard worked for the Japanese multinational for three years, until 2004, at their Software Support Centre in Bracknell as an IT specialist. He said he was a third line support tech, dealing with issues deemed too difficult for technicians on first or second line support. In 2015, Richard told BBC's Panorama he accessed Horizon data remotely to maintain the system.

After leaving Fujitsu, Richard broke away entirely from IT and enrolled in a BSc in Podiatry at the University of Southampton. He then worked for the NHS until 2011, eventually leaving to work for his own private practice. He was in that role, with his own clinic, when he took to the stand in 2019.

While he was on the stand, the judge writes that Richard said "data corruption was an issue in Legacy Horizon". The podiatrist admitted his evidence “was, unsurprisingly, hazy in many respects,” since the events took place almost 20 years prior, but the judge accepted his evidence. The Post Office's legal team even accepted that he was a "careful and precise witness," writes the judge.

Judge Peter Fraser commented: "Notwithstanding the limitations on his evidence due to the passage of time, I found Mr Roll to be a reliable and helpful witness. I do not consider it was hazy in any important respects. I also found his evidence to be very important."