Team working on controversial Post Office Horizon EPOSS software was the ‘joke of the building’

The ICL workforce working on the Post Office Horizon IT system lacked skilled builders and used unhealthy software improvement practices, a former employee has instructed the public inquiry into the scandal.

Software developer David McDonnell instructed the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry that, at the very minimal, it was clear that the important money account element of the software, which allows subpostmasters to steadiness their accounts, ought to have been rewritten.

Some subpostmasters had been despatched to jail for monetary crimes based mostly on proof from the software, and the lives of many extra had been ruined after they had been blamed for accounting errors.

Thousands of subpostmasters started having issues balancing accounts when, in 1999, the Horizon system was rolled out to Post Office branches to switch handbook accounting. The following 20 years noticed subpostmasters blamed for unexplained accounting shortfalls and made to repay them.

A complete of 736 subpostmasters had been prosecuted for monetary crimes based mostly on proof from the Horizon system, which has since been proved to include errors that may trigger such losses. More than 80 former subpostmasters, some of whom frolicked in jail, have thus far had wrongful convictions overturned.

McDonnell joined ICL Pathway in 1998 to work on the Post Office Horizon Systems Electronic Point of Sale Service (EPOSS) improvement workforce, initially as deputy improvement supervisor. Giving proof at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, he defined that he rapidly learnt of the issues being skilled by the ICL workforce tasked with creating the EPOSS software.

During his interview by ICL, McDonnell was instructed of “deep concerns” over the high quality of the workforce creating the EPOSS system, and that many of the workforce couldn’t deal with the work they needed to do. After becoming a member of the workforce, he noticed for himself the sub-standard high quality of the workforce creating the software.

He instructed the inquiry: “I would say out of the eight in the team, two were very good, another two were mediocre but we could work with them, and then there were probably three or four who just weren’t up to it and weren’t capable of producing professional code.”

McDonnell stated when he arrived, the EPOSS improvement workforce was “like the Wild West” with “no standards, a lack of rules and no design”.

“It was crazy. I had never seen anything like it before or since,” he stated. “I wouldn’t say it was a holiday camp, but it was free format. The EPOSS team was the joke of the building.”

McDonnell instructed the inquiry how, such was the consciousness of issues inside the firm, tech professionals had been even despatched from Japan by Fujitsu, which owned ICL, to evaluate the workforce and the well-known issues, however “they came, they sat and they went, without talking to anybody”. He stated he had been instructed to present these staff every thing they wanted, however was by no means instructed if something got here of this.

McDonnell was half of a process power set as much as examine issues with the Post Office EPOSS system and a co-author of a report it produced on its improvement. The process power was arrange by Terence Austin, the former methods programme director at ICL Pathway, who was questioned in the public inquiry on 27 October.

The report produced by the process power concluded: “Whoever wrote this code clearly has no understanding of elementary mathematics or the most basic rules of programming.”

McDonnell instructed the inquiry that issues over the money account software had been raised with former Fujitsu chief architect Gareth Jenkins, however that he denied the points and McDonnell was unable to get him to assist his name for a software rewrite. “When we started having conversations like that, he became evasive with me. I was never able to get him back on-site again after this.”

Jenkins is one of two former Fujitsu/ICL staff below investigation by the Metropolitan Police for potential perjury when giving knowledgeable witness proof about Horizon throughout trials of subpostmasters accused of fraud, false accounting and theft.

McDonnell was supplied a brand new job to guide the workforce as half of a restructure, however when he demanded the money account software be fastened as a situation of accepting the job, the dialog was delivered to a halt. “It was very clear the cash account software was not going to be rewritten,” he stated.

Computer Weekly first reported on issues with the Horizon system in 2009, when it made public the tales of a gaggle of subpostmasters (see timeline of articles under).