Software increasingly runs our lives, yet business executives appear to know less and less about the systems they themselves commission. These systems permeate every corner of our day-to-day existence. Everyone is involved, from those who buy them to those who implement them, and of course, those who use them. Executive, engineer, client, customer, worker, consumer. We are all impacted by faulty software. We are also all responsible for it.
The Horizon IT Scandal, also known as the British Post Office Scandal, is one of the UK’s biggest ongoing miscarriages of justice. The Horizon system, created and run by Fujitsu in the late 90s and early 2000s, has been implicated in the wrongful convictions of more than 900 subpostmasters for theft, fraud and false accounting. About 700 of these prosecutions were carried out by the Post Office itself. Due to the immense mental stress and financial strain that subpostmasters were put under, including criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods, homes, debts, and bankruptcies, this led to stress, illness and family breakdowns and is linked to at least thirteen suicides.
A recent Co-Recursive podcast episode talked to one of the sub-postmasters who pleaded guilty to false accounting. It’s a truly stunning listen, as is the amazing ITV limited series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Both reveal that the system was wrong, not the subpostmasters.
But, The System Is Never Wrong
What is truly shocking is the systemic failure not just in the computer and accounting systems that should protect both the Post Office and the subpostmasters, but also in the way the prosecutions were carried out. The Post Office is a private institution and can bring a private prosecution against individuals, provided the applicant can provide evidence. This can be challenged, but in Post Office cases, the way they were represented typically suggested these were reasonable prosecutions.
We know of no case where any sub-postmaster actually asked the DPP to intervene. And even if they had, there is no particular reason to suppose that they would have intervened. Any case presented by the Post Office (which would likely have said nothing of its problems with the Horizon software) would have looked perfectly reasonable.
The Post Office doubled down on the idea that it was right, that its expensive Fujitsu system was infallible, and that postmasters were crooked.
While the UK Government has now agreed to quash the wrongful convictions, many individuals have had their livelihoods wrecked with no real compensation. Those who pleaded guilty received no compensation at all, and those who did got little due to the high legal fees involved in the case.
And of course, many families have been shattered through the loss of loved ones who weren’t guilty in the first place.
Profits before People
An organisation such as the UK Post Office should be a bastion of reliability. Its behaviour should be unimpeachable. What this terrible story has shown is a disconnect between the leadership of these organisations and the technical systems they put in place to make their businesses more efficient.
No business decides to implement a software system without first proving to itself that it will drive long-term efficiency. Efficiency usually means doing more with fewer people and better systems.
The ongoing misery caused by the Horizon system debacle should be a warning to us all that IT systems are also human systems. They connect us, make our lives easier, but can also cause great harm. Fundamentally, there is an ongoing lack of accountability in systems implementation that needs to be addressed. Who is responsible? Is it the commissioning company? The implementing company? The operating company? Where is the accountability, and how can we prevent this from happening again?
These are the questions that should be asked at the highest level in any review, and I feel there should be national or international guidelines and guardrails in place to avoid broken systems causing human misery. In technology, we are mainly obsessed with AI, but we don’t even pay enough attention to the systems already out there that are changing every day.