The Post Office Horizon helpdesk was a toxic, rudderless and resentful setting, the place racism was a each day prevalence and subpostmasters had been thought-about incompetent or corrupt, the general public inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal has heard.
Speaking on the newest listening to within the ongoing Post Office Horizon inquiry, IT marketing consultant Amandeep Singh, who labored at ICL on the Post Office’s Horizon helpdesk in Wakefield, Yorkshire, from 2000 to 2001, revealed particulars about life on the opposite finish of the phone line that subpostmasters turned to for assist with the IT system they utilized in branches.
Horizon was launched in 1999 to exchange primarily handbook accounting practices. Originally from ICL, earlier than its acquisition by Fujitsu, the IT system was rolled out throughout the Post Office department community, however its introduction led to a sudden enhance in subpostmasters reporting unexplained shortfalls of their accounts, for which they had been blamed.
Hundreds had been prosecuted and 1000’s misplaced big sums of cash, with many going bankrupt. Over 80 former subpostmasters have to this point had wrongful convictions for fraud and theft overturned.
In 2009, Computer Weekly printed an investigation into the issues skilled by seven subpostmasters who had been utilizing Horizon. The Post Office advised every of them that no person else was experiencing issues and coated up the pc errors. It is a widespread criticism of subpostmasters that the helpdesk didn’t assist them examine unexplained accounting shortfalls.
Lack of belief and coaching
Singh, who was on a 12-month work placement with ICL as a part of his pc science diploma at Huddersfield University, labored on the ICL Epson assist desk initially, however this was built-in with Fujitsu’s Horizon helpdesk assist desk after the Japanese provider acquired ICL.
Singh mentioned the helpdesk operation he was a part of – made up of about eight groups of 14 individuals, generally known as squads – was rudderless, resentful, racist and undertrained to assist subpostmasters, who had been themselves unprepared for the Horizon system. There was additionally a tradition of not trusting the subpostmasters, he mentioned.
“People were having genuine software problems,” Singh advised the inquiry, however spoke of “a pre-built prejudice that you can’t trust the people and that they are incompetent”.
“We were much happier to push down on the subpostmasters and say ‘it’s your issue’ than to push it upwards and ask whether there is an issue or question why we are having so many calls about this” Amandeep Singh, former ICL engineer on Horizon IT helpdesk
Asked whether or not this prejudice contributed to the Horizon scandal, he mentioned: “If you have already made a judgement call [that] the people you are supporting are incompetent or corrupt in some way, it would take a lot for people to think the software has a problem. We were much happier to push down on the subpostmasters and say ‘it’s your issue’ than to push it upwards and ask whether there is an issue or question why we are having so many calls about this.”
He mentioned a part of the issue was a lack of management, with the helpdesk groups left to kind every thing out themselves and non-existent managerial assist. There was a administration staff, nevertheless it did nothing, he mentioned.
“They didn’t know anything, they never touched the software. You would only go to them to ask for holidays,” mentioned Singh. “The managers were acutely aware that the helpdesk was struggling, so they picked out people in the teams that were most capable and made them like floor walkers, team leaders, or advocates, if you like, and you would go to them with a problem. It felt like a rudderless ship.”
Toxic office setting
He additionally spoke of a toxic setting within the helpdesk staff after the merger, as a result of extra senior second-line assist engineers had been put in the identical staff because the first-line assist. Singh mentioned there was resentment amongst engineers who had been moved.
“On top of this, they were no longer supporting customers like graphic design and media agencies, but supporting an old lady in Wales who doesn’t even know what a personal computer is. A lot of [the team] felt the role was beneath them and that toxicity just grew and grew.”
He mentioned though the setting was toxic, he knew he was solely there for a yr as a pupil and simply wished to see it out.
Singh witnessed racism on a each day foundation, with subpostmasters from Asian backgrounds being singled out for discrimination. “Many of these people we were supporting were Asian subpostmasters. Sometimes they would ring up and say they have a £2,000 or £5,000 discrepancy, or even a wild figure like £100,000, and people in the team would say, ‘I’ve got another Patel’. You would hear it constantly.” He mentioned though he has an Asian background, no person ever questioned the language that was getting used.
Frantic and nerve-racking
Singh was a first-line engineer between October 2000 and September 2001, within the early days of the Horizon system. He advised the inquiry the groups had been inundated with calls in these early days: “It was a constant stream and it used to peak on Wednesdays when subpostmasters would do their reconciliation and balance their books. The helpdesk was open longer that day because you knew it was going to be a really, really heavy day. You could be on the phone for a few hours with a subpostmaster trying to help them reconcile.”
He described the large problem of shifting from the Epson assist desk, the place the individuals he was supporting had been tech-savvy, to the Post Office Horizon helpdesk, the place he could be supporting an aged subpostmaster with little or no IT data: “This was 2000. A lot of subpostmasters had worked in their branches for decades and had not even been around a personal computer. Then you were asking them to use the [Horizon] software.”
Singh mentioned he obtained no coaching in the best way to cope with individuals with completely different ranges of pc literacy, and a number of the individuals he had to assist didn’t even know what a pc mouse was. “The lack of IT knowledge brought anxiety to the subpostmasters, and to us, because we had to sometimes explain a complex transaction, knowing the subpostmaster would struggle orientating themselves around [the system],” he mentioned.
“You had to physically build yourself up for these calls because you knew that somebody would call with a discrepancy. The subpostmasters were always quite frantic, so stressed, asking, ‘How have I got this figure? How am I going to reconcile this account?’. We would work with them for hours, and if we couldn’t resolve it, we would go to team leaders. If we couldn’t [resolve it], it would have to be written off as a discrepancy. This almost became the norm.”
He mentioned subpostmasters had been continually paying small quantities to cowl unexplained shortfalls and solely referred to as the helpline when the figures had been excessive.
According to Singh, within the early days of the helpdesk, individuals had been calling in about the best way to do transactions, however this decreased as subpostmasters rapidly received used to it. “Then, nearly everything was discrepancy, discrepancy, discrepancy. [That] was what all the calls were about – people just not being able to reconcile their accounts to zero.”
He mentioned he solely obtained a few days’ coaching to see the gear, run some dummy transactions and study in regards to the software program. He mentioned, throughout coaching, they most likely received to do a reconciliation as soon as, and had been primarily doing routine transactions.
