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The cover-up is at least as dangerous as the original incompetence. It was a heavy-handed, conscious, legally aggressive cover-up. The people responsible knew e

The cover-up is at least as dangerous as the original incompetence. It was a heavy-handed, conscious, legally aggressive cover-up. The people responsible knew exactly what was happening, and they were more than happy for the blame to fall on innocent sub-postmasters. Horizon cost £2.4bn and was apparently developed by a team of eight, three of whom were described by the team lead as "incompetent." Fujitsu also screwed up an IT system for the NHS. £10bn was wasted on "the biggest IT failure ever seen." But Fujitsu still keep getting government contracts. Which is an even bigger scandal. There's a real stench of corruption around these deals, and of government procurement in general in the UK. See also HS2, PPE procurement, Test and Trace, and others.

csan 3y ago
Procurement is indeed broken/corrupt. See also the recent £1.4 HMCTS reform programme. https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk
toyg 3y ago
> But Fujitsu still keep getting government contracts. The brand is getting a bit too tarnished though. I wouldn't be surprised to see them rebranding soon.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  Or increasing their political 'donations'.
acdha 3y ago
> But Fujitsu still keep getting government contracts This isn’t terribly surprising: government contracting is a hard business to qualify for and relatively few companies have done so. They all have failures along with successes so any attempt to ban one of them will be opposed by the people who’ve found some semblance of a working team as well as any politicians they’re close to, and it’s hard to argue that most of the replacements would be substantially more likely to deliver working systems. The underlying problem here is that this work should be run by civil servants who are familiar with the domain and have the proper incentives. This is politically anathema to the Tory/New Labor types (or Republicans here in the US) who are committed to the fiction that there are enormous cost savings to be had from outsourcing government functions and they aren’t going lead a serious procurement reform effort because the first answer would be “most things are less efficient when contracted out” and the second would be “you need to pay market rates for technical talent even to contract effectively and empower those experts”.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Indeed. You can't sack/blacklist Capita or Serco or Fujitsu, no matter how bad their conduct, because they're absolutely critical to British state capacity. And the only reason they've been made that critical is profit and union-busting. Which is kept in place by recycling donations to the ruling party.
leoedin 3y ago
> Horizon cost £2.4bn and was apparently developed by a team of eight, three of whom were described by the team lead as "incompetent." Where did most of that money go? Was there 8000 middle managers?

csan 3y ago

Procurement is indeed broken/corrupt. See also the recent £1.4 HMCTS reform programme. https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk https://csan149.substack.com/p/justice-at-risk

toyg 3y ago

> But Fujitsu still keep getting government contracts. The brand is getting a bit too tarnished though. I wouldn't be surprised to see them rebranding soon.

hermitcrab 3y ago
Or increasing their political 'donations'.

acdha 3y ago

> But Fujitsu still keep getting government contracts This isn’t terribly surprising: government contracting is a hard business to qualify for and relatively few companies have done so. They all have failures along with successes so any attempt to ban one of them will be opposed by the people who’ve found some semblance of a working team as well as any politicians they’re close to, and it’s hard to argue that most of the replacements would be substantially more likely to deliver working systems. The underlying problem here is that this work should be run by civil servants who are familiar with the domain and have the proper incentives. This is politically anathema to the Tory/New Labor types (or Republicans here in the US) who are committed to the fiction that there are enormous cost savings to be had from outsourcing government functions and they aren’t going lead a serious procurement reform effort because the first answer would be “most things are less efficient when contracted out” and the second would be “you need to pay market rates for technical talent even to contract effectively and empower those experts”.

pjc50 3y ago
Indeed. You can't sack/blacklist Capita or Serco or Fujitsu, no matter how bad their conduct, because they're absolutely critical to British state capacity. And the only reason they've been made that critical is profit and union-busting. Which is kept in place by recycling donations to the ruling party.

leoedin 3y ago

> Horizon cost £2.4bn and was apparently developed by a team of eight, three of whom were described by the team lead as "incompetent." Where did most of that money go? Was there 8000 middle managers?