February 14, 2025

Post Office ditched plan to replace Fujitsu with IBM in 2015 due to cost and project concerns

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As a project to exchange the Submit Office’s controversial core computer technique by 2025 progresses, a statutory community inquiry has been instructed of a failed endeavor to replace the application 10 years previously.

A approach to change the Horizon retail and accounting procedure, which is at the centre of a countrywide scandal, with software from IBM was ditched because of to concerns more than expense and how very long it would consider to produce.

The Post Office environment introduced very last year that it is at the moment doing the job on a job to change the Horizon retail and accounting system from Fujitsu with “simpler, more rapidly and additional intuitive” computer software.

This is not the very first time the Write-up Office has experimented with to substitute Horizon, which was proved in the Substantial Courtroom to be error-prone.

In June 2015, talking in Parliament, MP Andrew Bridgen uncovered the Publish Place of work was looking to exchange the Horizon program retail and accounting technique, applied in countless numbers of Publish Office environment branches throughout the nation, with engineering from IBM.

Horizon was released in 1999 to exchange largely manual accounting methods. Originally from ICL, which was obtained by Fujitsu in 2002, it was rolled out across the Write-up Workplace branch community from 1999. But its introduction led to a sudden enhance in subpostmasters reporting unexplained shortfalls in their accounts, for which they were blamed. The Write-up Office environment instructed each of them that nobody else was encountering problems and protected up the computer glitches.

This led to what is known as the Submit Workplace Horizon scandal, which observed a lot of lives wrecked and one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in British background (see timeline of Computer Weekly article content about the scandal since 2009).

Campaign team

Bridgen was one of a tiny group of MPs campaigning for impacted subpostmasters, some of which ended up prosecuted for fraud and theft and despatched to jail.

Details of the program to exchange Horizon was considerable at the time, because the Submit Workplace was denying the procedure had any complications. Talking at an adjournment movement in the Home of Commons in 2015, Bridgen said: “Despite the Submit Office environment claiming the Horizon process is 100% trustworthy, I have an email in my possession proving that the Article Office is now urgently searching for a substitute software program method from IBM. It would look to me that it is sunset for the Horizon system certainly.”

At the time, the Write-up Office mentioned this was practically nothing new as several contracts ended up coming to close.

But this 7 days, eight a long time afterwards, in the statutory public inquiry into the Horizon scandal, it was unveiled that perform with IBM experienced essentially begun.

Gary Blackburn, previous workforce lead at Write-up Workplace NBSC, was operating on the task with IBM.

Requested by barrister Flora Website page why the Publish Business office planned to substitute Horizon, he said: “I consider [Horizon was] just previous know-how, and it was time to transfer on to one thing that was a lot quicker to develop, less difficult to produce, so that new solutions could be brought on more quickly.”

Unaware of other suppliers

Blackburn instructed the public inquiry that he was unaware of any other suppliers becoming thought of. “I was not occasion to people sort of contractual discussions,” he explained. “I really do not keep in mind anybody talking to me about what the selections had been and irrespective of whether there ended up other alternatives that we’d seemed at.”

He explained the venture was cancelled in excess of charge and job supply problems. “I did hear strategies that there were being problems over expense and regardless of whether it would be deliverable to the timescales we required it to be,” mentioned Blackburn.

“I think this was not just a uncomplicated changeover, like Horizon Online, the place we were being introducing new software package it was components, datacentre and the front business, as nicely, so it was a appreciable challenge.”

In April 2021, the Write-up Office announced it was eventually getting ready for the stop of the Horizon agreement with Fujitsu by 2025, when it included an excess calendar year to assistance its changeover to a new procedure.

The Article Business office was not available for an update when contacted.

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