For over 16 years, a large corporation relentlessly accused 900 postmasters of theft, false accounting, and fraud, despite the fact that the branch shortages were actually due to an accounting bug. It’s easy to understand the possible consequences of such accusations. The software enforced by the company is now being considered “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history.”
However, Rishi Sunak lacks imagination. On the other hand, the U.S. Marine Corps has coined an economic term that perfectly describes the Horizon fiasco as a “clusterfuck.” The Cambridge Dictionary primarily defines this as “a very rude word for a complete failure or a very serious problem.” Many mistakes and problems occurring at the same time.
Horizon was a product of the flawed and sometimes ignorant IT procurement system that the British state relied on for decades. The system procured from its ICL offshoot, owned by the Japanese giant Fujitsu, was a sprawling, computer bug-filled monster.
The plan was to replace the post office’s paper-based accounting system, but the hasty rollout for 13,000 busy, non-technical postmasters starting in 1999 was inadequately trained for the scale of the workflow transformation involved. Users quickly discovered bugs and flaws in the system, but the post office administrators showed a blind trust in the technology, leading to the prosecution of the sub-postmasters, ruining their lives and even leading to suicides.
Horizon was an electronic POS system that replaced paper-based cash registers and was networked, theoretically allowing the Post Office to keep an overall record of cash flows across the country. However, it seemed the system was “simply not up to the task it was asked to do,” according to The Guardian’s Alex Hearn.
By 2001, a team led by one of the system’s developers had discovered “hundreds” of bugs. Although a full list has not been compiled, court records revealed several examples, including the “Dalmellington Bug,” which caused the screen to freeze while the operator was trying to confirm receipt of cash. Each time the user pressed the Enter key on a frozen screen, the record was silently updated, making the subpostmaster responsible for the result.
The most peculiar part of the story is how long it took for the truth to emerge in the political system. Journalists have continued to tell the stories of Horizon’s victims, and a class action lawsuit was filed against the post office, with a public investigation beginning in 2020.
It wasn’t until ITV aired “Mr Bates vs. Post Office” that the issue became a hot political topic. The power of drama changed public opinion and revitalized the government. If there’s one major lesson to be learned from this mess, it’s the blind faith in technology that companies purchased at high prices. Now, organizations are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence, which may lead to further injustices in the future.
John Norton is Minderoo Center for Technology and Democracy, Cambridge
Source: www.theguardian.com
