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>I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes. I worked in a highly regulated com
by agilob 5y ago
>I don't know where you find the limits here, in the sense that at some level there is a mistake here. People make mistakes.
I worked in a highly regulated company, we were under supervision of FDA, EMA and German EMA. We once missed a bug in database migration where a boolean field was false by default in java (non-nullabe), but it could be null in database column. It apparently broke a few reports (NOT running software, just pdf reports) for pharmacological clinics, 2 developers, 2 testers, our PO and out CTO had "disciplinary" actions (don't remember what it was really called) and their actions were under supervision from external consultants our company had to pay for.
It's crazy we don't have such rules in finance, food, data processing and publishing industries.
> The situation at the Royal Mail is likely to be dramatically more serious, because there's a significant chance they were both covering up serious failings and knowingly directly prosecuting people to do so.
Yes, RM decided to start internal investigation that lasted a few years, instead immediately contacting police, this is why it lasted so long and were so many victims.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago> Yes, RM decided to start internal investigation that lasted a few years, instead immediately contacting police, this is why it lasted so long and were so many victims. Yes, but the distinction here is not actually as useful here as you might think. In this situation, Royal Mail _are_ the police (the USPS has its own police too). But Royal Mail are also the prosecutors in court (they have/had prosecutorial power). They didn't really delay sending it to the police because they never would have. It wasn't a police matter because definitively it was a Royal Mail matter. (The Royal Mail has had the power to investigate and prosecute since before there even were police.) Edit to add: it is now a "Post Office" matter as well because they are distinct businesses as of 2013, and Post Office Ltd is an ordinary company. But the key period concerns a time when they were one and the same
- TwoHeadedBeast 5y agoIf I'm not mistaken, this is not some special power Royal Mail has. In the UK, anyone can launch a prosecution.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoYes. I have been corrected above. It is a longstanding power the Royal Mail had, in fact. But yes, private prosecutions are protected by law and Royal Mail now prosecutes using the right of an individual RM employee to bring the charge. So the bit I want to read up on later is exactly who the individuals were in each prosecution. Is it the chief executive?