Britain’s Post Office scandal is a typical IT disaster
The perils of public bodies and IT procurement
Paul Patterson was repentant. Fujitsu was “truly sorry”, the head of its European business told MPs on January 16th, for its role in Horizon, a faulty payments system that resulted in the false conviction of over 900 Post Office sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015. Why did the Japanese firm do nothing about bugs it knew bedevilled its software, even as tales of injustice, destitution and worse mounted? “I don’t know. I wish I knew but I just don’t know.”
Mr Patterson is the first Fujitsu executive to be questioned publicly about the scandal; others will be probed more forensically at a separate public inquiry. Yet already the evidence points to classic problems with the way public bodies contract firms to build and manage large IT systems—as well as to the risks of believing that computers are always right.
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Human says no"
Britain January 20th 2024
- Northern Ireland’s peace process is not over
- Britain has seen an alarming rise in poetry sales
- Rishi Sunak’s pyrrhic victory on Rwanda
- Britain’s Post Office scandal is a typical IT disaster
- The map for the next British election has been redrawn
- Britain tries to correct the treatment of gender-dysphoric kids
- Scottish nationalism’s left turn
From the January 20th 2024 edition
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