This isn’t acceptable. If it’s important to the government, then all the more reason to hold them to account. This whole scandal makes a mockery of software engineering as if there is no way to ensure quality.

I work on software arguably less critical than this, in that it’s never been used to prosecute anyone, yet any discrepancy in numbers is found by QA, understood and duly fixed. Why can’t we demand the same from software which the outputs of can and are used as evidence in court? Why is it acceptable for them to say “it was too costly?”

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For almost two decades, the Post Office, supported by Fujitsu, falsely prosecuted nearly a thousand sub-postmasters rather than admit the Horizon system was flawed.

From the earliest trials in 1999, internal reports show Horizon (which Fujitsu designed and maintained) caused “severe difficulties” for users.

The business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, has “demanded” talks about Fujitsu’s contribution to the compensation scheme for victims.

In 2021, the Foreign Office determined that a communications system provided by Fujitsu had “significant deficiencies resulting in a technical solution that is likely to be unfit for purpose”.

It provides major IT systems to, among others, the Ministries of Defence and Justice, HMRC, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Fujitsu’s senior UK lobbyist, Clark Vasey, founded the Blue Collar Conservatism parliamentary group with (now) “minister for common sense” Esther McVey.

The original article contains 996 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!