On: Ex Post Office CEO hands back award after IT failu...

[hermitcrab]

According to the TV drama, the Fujitsu staff could go in and change data in the live data, while the log said it was the subpostmaster making the change. If so, that seems like negligently bad design.

[SilverBirch → hermitcrab]

It was an IT project for a government department designed and delivered in the 90s, negligently bad design is pretty much what I think we would've expected.

[hermitcrab → SilverBirch]

The history of UK government IT contracts is indeed a very sad one.

From memory:

UK Covid test and trace system: £37 billion pretty much wasted

UK NHS IT system: £12 billion pretty much wasted

And I'm sure there are lots of others.

And yet we are still giving huge projects to the same companies. Amazingly, Fujitsu's contract for the Horizons system has recently been renewed.

[_Wintermute → hermitcrab]

Only a small fraction of the covid test and trace costs were on software, the overwhelming majority was on lab tests and PCR kits.

[hermitcrab → _Wintermute]

Fair point. I don't know what percentage was IT.