The UK Post Office should at least have considered open source software for Horizon to enhance transparency, empower users, and avoid vendor lock-in, which could have prevented or mitigated the scandal’s impact. People like Richard Moorhead, Christopher Hodges, Alan Bates, and the long running Computer Weekly coverage all underscore the need for transparency and accountability, indirectly supporting open source principles, although direct advocacy is rare. For future systems, the Post Office and similar organizations should prioritize open source to prevent such injustices.
The establishment narrative often focuses on individual accountability rather than systemic issues like software design. But this overlooks how proprietary systems enabled the Post Office to deflect responsibility.
Open source software aligns with ethical principles of justice, autonomy, and resource stewardship, making it a compelling alternative for future public sector IT projects.
Thoughts?!
Care needs to be taken with big orgs like the NHS to not try and boil the ocean with massive IT systems. Concentrating on open interoperability standards allows for smaller more flexible contracts and the ability to swap out components when needed.
Open source licences would be the ideal default although at a minimum the purchasing org should have a licence that allows them (or subcontractors) to make fixes without being tied to the original vendor.
Biggest problem to open source health adoption has been the extreme unwillingness to form an international standards group around diagnoses and labeling.
Closest we have is the WHO with ICD but for some fucking inane reason it’s only used reliably by the second and third world. (Ironically this means most African countries have freakishly good digital MAR interop when they can afford to put in a system that uses those standards.)
I’m not British. There are many things that I admire about the United Kingdom.
This is the nation that produced Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, George Orwell, JK Rowling, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, David Attenborough. Led Zeppelin, Aldous Huxley, JRR Tolkien.
But the one thing that disturbs me is the unbelievable level of corruption.
In Britain, political parties can raise millions of pounds from one single individual. Private corporations, including foreign corporations, are allowed to give large amounts of money to political parties. Several members of the UK parliament currently work as consultants and lawyers for large corporations such as Thames Water or HSBC. This is all legal.
Compare this to France.
In France, no individual is allowed to give more than 7000 pounds to a political party. Corporations are banned from giving money to political parties. Members of parliament are all banned from having second-jobs. And if you break these rules, an independent agency (HATVP) has the power to criminally prosecute you.
Why did France pass these tough rules ? Huge corruption scandals
France had one President (Nicolas Sarkozy) sell access to his donors
When the French media revealed these scandals, the French political class was so embarrassed that it actually forced them to take action.
The British had similar corruption scandals.
David Cameron was caught selling access to Downing Street in exchange of money:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/26/david-cameron-private-dinners-tory-donors
Boris Johnson was also caught selling access to Downing Street in exchange of money:
https://www.ft.com/content/8c6041ff-a223-43e9-9e45-53c3f7cf47f7
Yet the British political class did… absolutely nothing !!! No reform…
Similar scandals have led to completely different legislative outcomes.
In Britain, the rot runs deep.
Hi dad, I’m America.
@yak So this is an interesting thing. Obviously the functionality required by the #PostOffice is to a degree bespoke - but not considering ownership was a critial failure of the contracting process.
Interestingly I think that there is something that every #creditunion that outsources its #corebanking and other IT should consider - How locked into that offering they are and what happens if they want to change? #Opensource #banking solutions offer the ability to both switch vendors and also customise to their requirements realitively easily - I’m not sure how many use solutions based on #mifos or #fineract - I guess they are still fairly new.
The fact they paid to have a custom system built and it’s still proprietary and controlled by a vendor is crazy to me.
Also, hi friendica user!
@Blisterexe Well so many businesses do this because they believe that the vendor will somehow charge less if they can reuse that code… but if its highly customised thats unlikely . it just becomes a case of pushing the costs down the road.
Not many postal banking businesses in the world
The vendor will absolutely take that custom code and use it to extract maximum profit from a different customer. I’ve experienced it from both sides of the transaction. Open source at least allows the functionality to be “developed” only once.
Very likely that the people involved in the deal were corrupt. It wouldn’t surprise anybody if they got a nice sum deposited into an offshore account, a free house, expensive art, or whatever else is used to hide corruption.
Unfortunately the opensource community is heavily disorganised. We don’t have a group to represent us, market opensource, push for its use in public office, fight for compensation for maintainers and developers, and so much more. A concerted effort could possibly accelerate adoption and make it possible for more people to earn a living from opensource, not just the lucky few who can do it in their free time and transition to a paid/funded position.
It doesn’t even have to be offshore accounts. Just a fat long-term maintenance contract would be enough to hide a lot of corrupt costs.
