Legacy software are these awkward pieces of software you inherit, cannot get rid of and eventually slowly rot at the heart of your system. The ones that are essential, and yet date from the years when punch cards, optical readers and switch-boards were the cutting edge of IT. Yes, and COBOL was a thing. They are still lurking out there, I saw them.
Legacy management is the management style you inherit, can’t shake off and eventually slowly rots your organisation.
The UK Post Office scandal is a human tragedy, a miscarriage of justice, an outright scandal. It also shows us the practical, human and business impact of decisions, practises, attitudes that may have once seemed the cutting edge of management, the gold standard model of driving businesses.
The Post Office scandal is also a direct legacy of management practises. It is probably not the last time we hear such a sorry saga.
If you live in the UK, you are already more than familiar with this story, that somehow seemed to come out of nowhere despite being decades old. The UK post office story suddenly exploded into a raging firestorm that swept with it 20 years of British industry icons.
For everyone else, this is the UK post office story and what we know so far…
Disclaimer as the case is still on trial: this article is based on the known facts as published on BBC, The Guardian, Private Eye, The Sun…
What We Know so Far
It all starts at the turn of the century, in 1995, when everyone’s mind was scrambling, trying to come to terms with these new tools, computers, electronic cashiers, the internet …
THE BIRTH OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY MID-90s
Computers were still mainly office tools. Notebooks would only become mainstream 10 years later. You were literally building your gaming rigs yourself. The internet was only just slowly picking up, and, again, overwhelmingly in the office.
IT in businesses meant mainly emails. Not knowing how to operate a computer was a power stance. Day to day, we used palm pilots, keyboards and CRT screens. Mainly for Excel and PowerPoint. A bit like today actually.
Business wise, you had to be ready for the internet and computerisation, as the paperless office and domotics were around the corner. Also a bit like today then.
But still, Information Technology was mostly Wizardry and Mystery. It had that mystique that it would transform your dull, inefficient, manual, human-error prone organisation into an infallible automated marvel of modernity.
And so everyone everywhere was expected to be ready to greet the new millennium with updated, modern systems. What is your plan for Y2K, paperless office and that internet thing?
FAILURE OF AN EPOS SOFTWARE
So, no surprise that the Royal Mail had this on top of its agenda. And especially when it came to computerise its branches transactions.
Off with the pencils and paperclips. In with the keyboards and databases.
The Post Office started early in 1996 to test solutions for EPOS systems (Electronic Point Of Sale), and settled on Horizon, a solution from ICL Pathway. The investment seemed gigantic for the time, according to a BBC article published in 1999. And with such an operationally critical system, the decision could not be whimsical.
It was to be the biggest non-military IT project in Europe.
The choice has settled on a storied vendor, ICL, which was one of these national computer champions set up in the 60s to fend of the dominance of the US, and specifically IBM. Pretty much like Bull in France. By the 90s, strategic independence was old-hat, has-been, figments of the cloak and dagger paranoid minds of Cold Warriors. ICL was sold to Fujitsu, but continued to be a prime vendor for national IT projects in the UK. A Bracknell institution.
And so, logically, with such a track record and a solid reputation, the Post Office signed up with ICL on the Horizon EPOS project that very year, 1996.
The project coupled solving the paperwork of both the Post Office as well as the Benefits Agency. Among the planned innovations, there was to be a swipe cards system to identify customers, EPOS systems to track payments, and other transactions.
Today, we would easily anticipate probable delays and snags given the sheer amount of technical, administrative and financial expectations, even by modern standards. IT systems after all, then as now, are not Lego bricks.
Throw in some untested solutions, and, by 1998, the project was written off, 2 years behind. It meant £570m for the Post Office and 170m for ICL. The Commons public accounts committee eulogy went: one of the biggest IT failures in the public sector. The reputational damage was such that ICL had to change its name into Fujitsu-Siemens to divert attention.
FAILURE RECYCLED
The Royal Mail continued to hurtle through its transformation into a new company, but matrixed up or not, the Post Office operations remained at the heart of it. The branches were still operated manually and the millennium was there. The post office branches books were still pen and paper.
Let’s take a wild guess. What are the odds on the Post Office side that someone then whispered something along those lines: how about doing something with this piece of software? Write me a memo by Monday on what it would take to just implement that part. Glue it back together to make it do what we need? What are the odds on the vendor side that their meetings went the same way? To be fair, the Post Office IT experts though it was bad idea. To everyone else, it must have looked like the genius business idea for the new millennium. – This is pure speculation.
The Horizon EPOS project though miraculously survived the shipwreck against the internal advice of the Post Office. To this day, it is the greatest pride of the then-CEO, future chairman of Fujitsu, Richard Christou.
What is not speculation, however, is that, having dug out Horizon from its grave, Fujitsu allocated a team that, in their own words, was “the joke of the building”. And the Post Office own board felt compelled to write down in its September 1999 minutes: “serious doubts over the reliability of the software remained”.
Umbrellas? – Deployed!
But let’s to step back from panto.
FAILURE EMBRACED
Where the story goes down the rabbit hole, is that the decisions to retain a patched faulty software, allocate it to a B team, and run it as a basic EPOS system meant that both companies accepted knowingly the risks of using a deficient financial reporting system… and bet that it would be mended on the fly.
In one sentence, financial accuracy was only paid lip-service by either the Post Office board or the vendor.
As a director – by definition liable for the accounts in some capacity – even before any human being was hurt, I would have been worried, and not just a little bit: it is nothing less than basic failure of duty of care of both parties.
Worse still, faults appeared immediately. The EPOS software started to report missing money and the sub postmasters were getting blamed for it. Petitions of sub postmasters were written and duly ignored, or dismissed. Pure speculation again, but probably resistance to change, crusty business practises and all that. No speculations however in the first court cases that appeared.
By 2003, former legal counsels of ICL had attacked the vendor for misrepresentation of themselves. The company already tried to throw the cases out of the courts. The Post Office legal team recommended to throw money at what they very technically called “gits”.
Grand start! And only the first noises of what would become the droning background of the Post Office operation. So engrained that many postmasters paid themselves for the shortfalls. When they enquired, they were told that they were the only ones with an issue. Failing that, postmasters were threatened, bullied, insulted or all of the above.
Horizon was infallible. The records could neither be accessed from remote nor modified.
Some sub postmasters went bankrupt. Others went to prison. Some killed themselves. All lost their standing within their community. The round-the-corner convenience store cheated its Community? Shame!
Stealing from a British icon, from Postman Pat? Unconscionable.
FAILURE IGNORED
Issues happen. Business acumen is about solving them.
In this case? The issues were known, ignored and dismissed as BAU, business as usual, from the board of directors, the newspapers or the legal establishment.
The current proposed panto focuses on the human side of the tragedy: it is indeed terrible. But this is so much more than “just” that: it is a systemic collapse of a community public service.
Some tried: court cases were relayed by reporters like Computer Weekly since 2009. BBC local also highlighted it in 2011. The revered Panorama itself, aired something about it in 2015. It ended up totally ignored.
And it was not only third parties, or even maligned parties. Internal audits of the Post Office chimed in: Ernst and Young wrote in 2011 that Fujitsu staff had unrestricted access to the individual accounts of the postmasters. Fujitsu experts vehemently denied that was the case, on this report or in courts.
Not even the Postmasters Union was moved by the issue: computer said so, and who may we be to contradict it.
The cases droned on and on.
Fujitsu and the Post Office stonewalled. Nothing to see here.
Fraud and lies to cover it.
FAILURE AWARDED AND REWARDED
That is how the day-to-day operation of the Post Office went for 2 decades. 20 years of smooth running. Missing money was identified, sub postmasters indicted, convicted, fined … because the system could not be wrong.
And for such a good job at defending the integrity of the Post Office, internal inquisitors and managers were rewarded and feted. They got knighthoods, bonuses and promotions. The top management went on to prestigious positions in charities and the usual quango afterlife of management.
Away from the human tragedy, they all did sign off the accounts without blinking, it seems.
We saw the Fujitsu management already, and the technical witness experts of Fujitsu continued to be encouraged to stand firm against the “lies” of the “nasty” sub postmasters (sic).
And on it went. Postman Pat morphing into Herr Flick.
All the time, it seems there was no other proof in the cases than Horizon records. Which begs the question: how could a justice decision be based on “computer and vendor said so”? Investigations in this case seem largely an abuse of the word.
UNTIL THE MUSIC STOPPED AND THERE WERE NO CHAIRS LEFT
Still, rumours kept on trickling. Noises snowballed. Until the tune of the Post Office legal teams started to change from “impossible” to “could not possibly know that”… A “pivot” as any.
On the music went, until the parcel stopped in front of the Post Office.
A lone sub postmaster had decided not to accept the Decree of Apostasy issued by the Post Office, not to accept the condemnation. Instead he relentlessly dug into the system. And finally found a whistle-blower in Fujitsu. The sub postmaster Alan Bates stood up to Postman Pat, the Red Pillar boxes and the Royal Mail.
Talk about zeitgeist: do we have to go from implicit trust to implicit distrust? It sure seems like it.
The rest unravels from there. Even if a 2020 BBC Panorama recap did not change much, it spun into drama. Literally, through a series on ITV.
And then it moved from drama to panto.
The big reveal was that the Horizon EPOS system was as waterproof as tissue paper. Accounts could be modified at will and accessed from remote. And so the “evidence” produced in court was at best not admissible, at worse straight-out lies.
The sub postmasters had been wrongly scorned, condemned, fined, jailed.
At the moment, we only just hear and see the wails of the Greek chorus of managers: laments, regrets, apologies, medals returned, woe is me… “Who could have known?”. Hmm, it seems pretty much everyone and anyone from the board meeting minutes of 1999 onwards? Or the internal notes from FSC. Or even the Ernst & Young report from 2011…
The story is in itself edifying, worrying and terrifying. Many have written about it.
HUMAN TRAGEDY
When all is said and done, passed the blood and tears, why would a British scandal strike me so much particularly?
Well, I worked ten years in the UK in West Byfleet, the very town where the jailed sub postmaster, Seema Misra, ended up jailed 15 months (!) for a fraud that only ever existed within the virtual world of a faulty EPOS system and its inquisitorial team.
And beyond that one case, 20 years of Black Mirror-esque, Kafkian seemingly dystopian perverted internal and legal proceedings from institutions that once stood as exemplars of their industry. As logics goes, its beggars belief that no-one even twitched or started doubting after clearly more than 4500 internal cases were opened over 20 years on an active roster around 8000. And if not that, it has been a background noise of 225 cases each year, nearly one per working day!
BUSINESS TRAGEDY
However much you know about IT, restructuring, or business, being told every day that one of your employee is committing financial fraud should get some bells ringing. Eventually at least.
So far, no one seems to question the basic business rationale behind any of these decisions, the legal defence or the processes.
Who would want to run a company where the basic financial system is known to be deficient? For 20 years. Well, the Post Office it seems.
Who would sell, hide limitations, or possibly fix, a faulty financial reporting software that could lead them in the dock? ICL/Fujitsu-Siemens.
So, past the trail of human lives, the ongoing legal proceeding, the media hullabaloo, the issue also lies with the management decisions and structures that allowed this to happen.
CORPORATE TRAGEDY
I do love a great company story, success and turn-arounds. Once, it was my life.
The Post Office went overnight from a miracle to a national shame among the general public. 20 years of miraculous turn arounds, XXIth century systems, “agility” in everything everywhere. Postman Pat successfully surviving the collapse of letters and the onslaught of emails.
500 years of history service saved from the grave.
All of that trust and “branding” burnt to the stake, and replaced with hardnosed personal ambition, bullies and a company operating at its core a “us vs them” company. Them the “nasty” sub postmasters.
And even if you do not care about the human toll, the business or the corporation, then maybe the public service, the historical legacy of what you are managing, let alone leading, should have given you an extra motivation to take a minimum of interest?
The Post Office, in the UK, as much as La Poste in France, or Bundespost in Germany, is one of these iconic national symbols. Once ubiquitous, they are always somewhere in our mental picture of our nation. To quote the Times, the Post Office is now a synonym for vindictive, petty and greedy management; and there’s no way back from that.
Once the red pillar boxes meant as much as double-decker buses and bowler hats. A figure of trust and pride. Now a figure of ridicule and distrust for the Post Office. Self-absorbed, vindictive and endogenous management made the Ye Ol’ Post Office something reviled.
MORE THAN A TRAGEDY, A MANAGEMENT STORY
So far, the only angle taken seems to be the emotional one. The human tragedy, a UK Erin Brockovich, Plucky Postman Bates, soon in its second season – if you are to believe the tabloids.
It surely requires as much to address the core questions: how could it happen in the first place, how to spot it, how was the system allowed to even exist. And bring solutions to this.
Going down the panto route is not going to cut it for me, exactly because of the miscarriage of justice, the human tragedy. Boo-Hiss at the panto figures, Dame Twankey as Laura Vennells, the Prince of Darkness (sic) as Tim Parker, and Not-Constable Plod as Stephen Bradshaw.
Yes, justice must be done. And systemic failure redressed.
Beyond the human tragedy and management panto, the core question is how could so many processes, logics and arguments fail the most basic duties. How could such reckless, illogical, downright stupid decisions be taken?
We depend on so many of these third party software in our daily lives that we should ensure that it cannot happen again.
The UK Post Office may be the first company whose decisions really caught up with them. Like we have legacy software, this is legacy management. A chain of decisions made on fallacious arguments and soothing sophism.
A series of unfortunate, yet predictable, events need addressing.
That is the series of analyses and thoughts I invite you to join for the coming 2 articles: The Post Office: Management Smoke and Consultancy Mirrors and Don’t let the Post Office Case happen to you – Fireproof Your Business
To be continued.
Follow Pascal Bollon on Making NonSense of It 
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