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20 February 2004
Keith Baines Our Ref: CLS/jla/528
Contract Manager (FS)
Post Office Limited
Change & IS
Calthorpe House
15-20 Phoenix Place
London WC1 ODA
Dear Keith
Re: Post Office Counters Ltd. v Mrs Julie Wolstenholme
I am writing in response to your letter of 6 February 2004 and note Post Office’s concern in
respect of the Expert’s opinion that the Horizon system installed at Cleveleys branch was
defective and that the HSH was more concerned with closing call than preventing
recurrence of faults.
An Appendix is attached which sets out Fujitsu Services’ view of and responses to the main
points in the Expert’s report.
In respect of the earlier correspondence between Jan Holmes (Fujitsu Services) and Jim
Cruise (Post Office Ltd), we would be prepared to discuss this further if this would help
progress the situation.
Yours sincerely,
Colin Lenton-Smith
Director, Commercial and Finance
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Jeb: services fujitsu.com
Appendix
Response to Expert’s Opinion
Re: Post Office Counters Ltd v Mrs Julie Wolstenholme: Claim number CR101947
Basis Of Response
Before addressing individual points from the Expert’s report there are two key areas of
understanding to be established; the first is the function and objectives of the Fujitsu
Services Horizon System Helpdesk (HSH), the second is the way that the Horizon system
handles transactions should a reboot be required part way through a customer session.
Horizon System Helpdesk
The HSH represents the 1% line of support to Post Masters. It operates under strict
contractual Service Level Agreements (SLA) covering aspects such as pick-up time, first
time fix, and time to close. These measures designed to ensure that Post Masters receive a
quick response to their call and, to the extent possible over the ‘phone, a timely return to
normal business operations.
Depending on the nature of the call the HSH operator would work with the Post Master to
solve the problem and return the Outlet to normal operation as soon as possible, in line with
the prevailing SLAs. If this could not be achieved the call would be escalated up the
support channel to 2", 3 or 4" line depending on the severity of problem. Whilst the
primary objective of the HSH is to return the Outlet to normal operation as soon as
possible, and rebooting the Counter often meets that objective, this does not mean that a
problem is closed at that point in time, as a detailed scrutiny of overall problem
management process would reveal.
Transaction Handling on Reboot
The primary interface between the Post Office Clerk and the external customer is the
Customer Session. Any transactions that are undertaken within a Customer Session are
stored on a Session Stack pending a Settlement transaction whereby goods and services
provided by Post Office to the customer are paid for. Only after the Settlement has been
confirmed and a receipt printed, will the totality of transactions on the stack be transferred
from the Session Stack to the transaction log (TMS Journal) and a record maintained of the
Stock Unit movements. Once the Stock Unit is ‘rolled over’ (balanced) the various pending
movements will be finalised and reflected in new Stock Unit balances.
It is at this point that any discrepancies and imbalances between Stock Units are identified
and handled through reconciliation and Post Master manual intervention. It this context a
discrepancy is in fact a balancing entry to ensure the Cash Accounts receipts and payments
tables agree. A discrepancy could occur, for example, if the Post Master incorrectly
declared the cash or stock position to the system against which the system compares its
own record.
If a Session is interrupted pre-Settlement, perhaps through a fault that requires a reboot, the
Session — and consequently the Session Stack - is not maintained and has to be re-started
once the system has been retumed to the Post Master. In 2000 the only exception to this
1
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were Automated Payment (AP) transactions where a smart device may have already been
charged before the payment was made. In this instance the system will, on reboot, prompt
the Post Master to complete the transaction through to Settlement. All other transactions
that may have been on the Session Stack will be lost.
Simply put, the design of the system precludes the possibility of a Session Stack being
partially, or doubly committed and thus accounting errors cannot be introduced through a
system crash or forced reboot.
The Expert’s Opinion
‘Reasonableness’ of calls to HSH
The Expert was unable to make direct comparisons between similar Outlets due to the
absence of records. While this was true of audit data formally available to Post Office Ltd,
Fujitsu Services (Post Office Account) are able to review an unregulated archive of records
of the other installed 6 Counter Outlets over a comparable period. The table below shows
the output from that analysis:
FAD PO. Name Install Total A H M os T X Z % %
Date Calls A&G Soft
005323 I Headingly ostoes I 74 I 20 5 7 3 Iarl4alé 2I 73% I 36%
005715 I Dungannon I 18099 I 25 I 8 2 1 [4 I 10 3 68% I 40%
009116 I Halstead 2gigiea I 16 I 3 1 a{if[7 [12 81% I 44%
013613 I Haverfordwest I 04/11/99 I 48 I 7 84 2I2 I 22 3 85% I 46%
153405 I Cleveleys[t] I os/z00I 101 I 15/1] 6 5[1I5I1I35I2I 14 I 16 85% I 35%
153405 I Cleveleys [2] I os/200I 85 I 15/1] 6 5/1 [5]1I35]2] 14 82% I 41%
176323 I Armley 1310/99 I 87 I 23 8 }2}4 7 I 29} 4 I 12 74% I 33%
185611 I Penarth osto/9 I 58 I 15 5 1 3 I 15} 2I 14 74% I 26%
250704 I Yorkgate 2aogiea I 32 I 5 4 3 I 16} 1] 3 84% I 50%
292323 I Otley o7/iag9 I 34 I 10 1{2I5 ajul2i2 71% I 32%
333427 I Darwen ators I 55 I 13 alelI2 1{5I13/3/3 76% I 24%
345432 I Wilmslow 25iiorea I 29 I 4 2 6 4I7 6 6% I 24%
431614 I Colwyn Bay I 05/11/99 I 89 I 19 2I7/3 2 I 38/5 I 13 79% I 43%
Call Legend
Type
A Advice and Guidance
F Reference Data
H Hardware
\ Implementation
K Cash Account
M Customer Complaint
N Network
° Operational
s Software
T Training
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Other
Rollout Helpdesk
Zz Security
[1] Cleveleys complete HSH call count including Rollout calls
[2] Cleveleys HSH call count without Rollout calls and the basis for comparison.
Analysis of the comparable Outlets shows that in terms of total calls made (3 from highest
out of 12), the %ge that were non Advice & Guidance (4" from highest) and the %ge that
were Software based (5"" from highest), Cleveleys numbers are broadly comparable with
the group of Outlets.
It is worth noting that Fujitsu Services is not aware of similar complaints or claims being
made from the other Outlets in the above list, some of which have higher call profiles than
Cleveleys.
Operator advice to ‘Reboot’
In this context the opinion of the Expert, that “this instruction treats the effect and not the
cause” is correct.
However, it would be incorrect to assume that no further work is carried out by Fujitsu
Services to address the various blue screen/system freeze/screen lock problems. Regular
maintenance updates are made to address these problems within the normal Release
programme.
Summary: Defective Equipment
The criticism that the technology installed at Cleveleys was ‘clearly defective’ is subjective
and based on the raising of 70 HSH calls over a 10-month period. There is no attempt to
substantiate the claim nor to draw any comparisons with external benchmarks.
Summary: Closing Calls
As already stated the HSH is targeted at returning Outlets to normal working as fast as
possible and is not in a position to analyse system error messages displayed on screens.
This is governed by contractual SLAs which are monitored by Post Office Ltd. So while
the Expert’s statement is fact it does not take into account the objectives of the HSH or the
manner in which it operates.
Summary: Worrying Discrepancies
It is difficult to comment on the statement made by the Expert in this part of the Summary
although he is alluding to the fact that system errors may be responsible for this. I have
explained why this cannot happen earlier in this report. The argument has been put forward
by a number of Post Masters in the past when challenged by Post Office Limited for
unacceptable losses and each time it has fallen when confronted by transaction data that
demonstrates that the system was operating normally during the disputed time period.
Unfortunately Fujitsu Services is unable to provide archived transaction data in respect of
Cleveleys for the disputed period as, under the terms of the contract in force with Post
Office Ltd at that time, it would have been deleted from the archive 18 months after it was
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originally stored. Thus transactions written up to 20" November 2000 would have been
deleted on or just after 20" May 2002.
Conclusion
The report presented by the Expert is based on a simple analysis of HSH records and not a
detailed understanding of how the Horizon system works, or even the prime objectives of
the Horizon System Helpdesk. Consequently the opinions expressed in the report, while not
always incorrect, do not present the whole story and are presented from a single
perspective.
We have identified where we could not argue against an opinion or where the opinion is
correct as a statement of fact but lacking in context. We have also identified where we
disagree with the opinion expressed.
20 February 2004