111–120 of 291 posts
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Since the government was in a wrong I do not understand at all why they are not ordered to compensate all legal expenses as well.
Government gets to write the laws. That is, when lobbyists let them.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252496560/Fujitsu-bosses... >For the first 10 years of Horizon’s existence, transaction and account data was stored on terminals in each branch before being uploaded to a central database via ISDN. Our source says this part of the system simply did not work. >“The cash account was a piece of software that sat on the counter NT box, asleep all day,” he said. “At the end of the day,…
The crappy state of rural UK broadband (circa 2010) is proudly on display here. ref: https://www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/c05470e5-337f-4b... Maybe the FCC went all NYPD-World-Police on the UK - popped over there to run things for a while.
Seems like the Futisu team running Horizon decided to reinvent everything badly.
Much of government IT was being given to consultancies like Fujitsu/EDS in the 15 years since 1994. These contracts ended badly: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/1280096810/Why-did-EDS-c... especially for the public paying the bills.
Martha Lane Fox and the GDS pointed out the folly of this approach in 2010 https://gds.blog.gov.uk/story-2010/
They've done an amazing job overall, but hubris overcame them with things like Verify https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.computerweekly.com/news/252...
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It's been 15 years since I've seen CMMI mentioned, and I was glad I hadn't.
Do you object to CMM as a model or just the CMMI/9001 industry?
I can see the point of such models in certain areas, like military, aerospace, naval, or, to stay on topic, Horizon, where dev is outsourced, somewhat critical, specs rather set in stone, and non experts need to measure how capable an organization is to deliver, but for anything else it just feels like unnecessary meta-management that brings significant organisational and development overhead.
Those postmasters defending charges of theft against them in the 2000s should not have had to prove that the computer system they were forced to use had bugs. In order to prosecute them in the first place, the Post Office should have had to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without risk of bias, that the computer system was correct. So, independent review at the very least, not testimony from parties with a veste…
Q) Did you or any of the people you got to examine the software found any way that what the defendents said was true?
A) No
Q) Then you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
I think the bigger issue here is around the power that a large organisation wields to duck and dive and use corporate tricks to manipulate how it played out. For example, the fact that so many people had been accused could have been analyzed if it was known e.g. Last year 5 convictions, this year, 700!
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One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Royal Mail is the network and carrier, while the Post Office is the primary entry point into that network (they also offer access to a bunch of other services not related to the Royal Mail). Doesn't make your point any less valid, but wanted to call out the distinction.
One nitpick: Royal Mail and Post Office are two separate companies with independent boards. Though as a nitpick of your nitpick, they weren't truly independent until the relevant provisions of the Postal Services Act 2011 came into effect on 1 April 2012. What we know today as the "Post Office" and "Royal Mail" had a long history before that.
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> What can be done? Not taking software results as a fact. Software report stating X in court should be equivalent to "the person who wrote this in a hurry would say X, but it's not a sworn testimony". We should have the person presenting any report like that be personally responsible for the contents. If they aren't willing, it shouldn't be presented.
We should have the person presenting any report like that be personally responsible for the contents. If they aren't willing, it shouldn't be presented. I don't think making it personal works at scale. You can't reasonably expect everyone giving evidence in court, say every individual police officer who is a witness to a speeding offence, to be a technical expert on the technological tools they are given to do their…
That's what I was going for. If the officer doesn't understand the limitations of their tool, they shouldn't testify in court beyond "I pointed it that way and read the number, as trained".
There are existing cases where the speed reading is contested because the handheld speed cameras can move slightly and bounce first off the side mirror then off the reg plate giving you "extra speed".
My point was that if you say "that person was speeding" you should be responsible for that statement afterwards, but you can say "I used the provided tool and got reading X", at least the doubt is there.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252496560/Fujitsu-bosses... >For the first 10 years of Horizon’s existence, transaction and account data was stored on terminals in each branch before being uploaded to a central database via ISDN. Our source says this part of the system simply did not work. >“The cash account was a piece of software that sat on the counter NT box, asleep all day,” he said. “At the end of the day,…
The CEO blames one of their directors; the Director blames the supplier; the supplier blames the requirements documentation; the Business Analysts blame the culture for creating confusing and conflicting requirements.
Yes, you can hold the organisation accountable but then the people who worked there back then are long gone, they don't care if the Post Office gets fined £500M.
You only have to look at the enquiry into the flammable cladding scandal which was entirely down to fraud, yet, there are people who have not been arrested over their misrepresentation of their products.
Software is in the walls. At some point legislators are going to come and ask the question how we stop things like this happening and if the Fujitsu's of the world don't have an answer then we can expect regulation that will likely embed practices that don't help. I don't think we take software reliability seriously enough, most of our focus is on speed of release, ever quicker cycles and it being OK to break things.…
This seems more an issue of bureaucratic incentives than software. Fujitsu wanted to hide bugs to look better for future contracts. The Post Office wanted to hide bugs to deflect blame from central leadership and be able to scapegoat people at will. The judicial systems seems to have either not cared or had incentives for some quick prosecutions. Software doesn't exist in a vacuum and software will never be perfect.…
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Sounds like the kind of bullshit BT and OpenReach pull too. Claim to be two unrelated companies and yet one owns parts of the other and the same boards run both - all so they can pass customer problems between the two I definitely.
I'm honestly surprised anyone complains about that split - it was introduced specifically so that BT wouldn't control the entire telecom infrastructure in this country, and OpenReach was formed to provide equal access to all operators - BT being only one of them. This is an extremely good solution to what used to be a massive inequality problem previously. So no, BT and Openreach aren't split for some bullshit reason…