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Amsphere Confidential and Privileged
On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
Re: Seema Misra
Addendum to Technical expert’s report to the Court prepared by
Charles Alastair McLachlan, a Director of Amsphere Consulting
Ltd.
90 Fenchurch Street
London EC3M 4BY
England
This report contains 8 pages
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Amsphere Confidential and Privi
On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
1 Table of Contents
1 TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 INTRODUCTION
3 Detailed Comments.
Charles McLachlan 1
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On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
2 Introduction
On 3:30pm on Sunday 10" October 2010, I had the first opportunity to consider the
witness statement of Gareth Jenkins dated 8" October served by e-mail on Friday 8"
October to defence counsel after 4pm.
Much of the document reflects the points of difference recorded in my final report
v1.0 at Section 4. However, there are new points that are introduced and some points
which are worthy of particular comment and this brief addendum seeks to address
these. For easy of reference I have referred to the page numbers in Jenkins’ witness
statement and the section numbers in my Final Report v1.0.
Charles McLachlan. 2
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On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
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3 Detailed Comments
3.1
3.2
3.3
Page 4: Jenkins refers to the fact that he would not expect the
state of the system to change between postmasters. It should be noted that we
asked for data for periods extending from both before and after Misra's tenure
as well as during her tenure. Post Office Ltimited have not made this data
available to us.
On Page 5S Jenkins seeks to address my hypotheses at 1.2. He correctly
identifies them as hypotheses rather than proven facts. However, he
misunderstands the logical flow of identifying relevant hypotheses, gathering
information that will inform these hypotheses, testing the hypotheses and then
drawing conclusions. Thus he conflates the relevance of the hypotheses with
his view that there is a lack of evidence to support them. In my opinion, these
hypotheses are relevant because should they be true then they provide an
alternative explanation to theft at West Byfleet. The lack of evidence that
Jenkins refers to is addressed in my report.
On page 6 Jenkins seeks to address concerns about the User Interface (the
Human Computer Interface or HCI). Two points:
The fact that there are documents that demonstrate an intention to use certain
HCI design principles is not proof that these HCI design principles were
relevant, properly implemented or when tested found to be effective . We
would wish to engage an HCI design expert to comment on the relevance of
the design principles to the context of the application and quality of
implementation.
Charles McLachlan. 3
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3.4
3.5
On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
This is the first time we have had sight of these documents despite requests
for the user manual, operations manual and training manuals more than 12
months ago. I have been shown the witness statement of Mrs Nixon from
Highcliffe in which she discusses her concerns as to the errors that can be
introduced by the user interface design. We have asked for access to test
environments to conduct a user interface audit. We have asked for access to
an operational system experiencing problems to establish whether the user
interface is a cause of these problems. The Post Office has not permitted
either of these two activities.
On page 13 Jenkins asks copmplains of lack of evidence and asks for an
example of how the failure of screen calibration could give rise to a
discrepancy. The nature of the problem
means that the system would not show it. If I press £100 and only
collect £10 then I am £90 down but the system doesn't know. If this is a bill
payment (e.g. rent, utility bill) then the balancing transaction may or may not
be reconciled in a manner that will reveal the error — it has not been possible to
explore the full set of products to understand which case applies.
On page 13 Jenkins quotes and agrees with my statement “Poor user interface
design can contribute to poor data entry quality and user errors.” He then
continues “However Professor McLachlan makes no attempt to explain in what
way the Horizon User Interface design is ‘Poor’.” As explained above, we
have had no opportunity to test or observe the operation of the user interface in
the manner we have requested and this has limited our abiity to identify
specific examples. However, my report does continue by citing two specific
user interface problems — screen calibration and the ‘Fast Cash’ button as
examples.
Charles McLachlan. 4
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3.6
3.7
3.8
3.9
On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
On page 17 Jenkins confirms that the Post Office choose not to report on the
variance check discrepancies which he believes would have led the sub post
master to investigate what is going on.
On page 18 Jenkins states that he has examined the data for West Byfleet for
the whole of Misra’s tenure to include the period in which he says the Calendar
Square issue had not been fixed. Lee Castleton, a claimant against the Post
Office in another matter, has provided me with evidence suggesting an
alternative explanation to that provided by Jenkins. In oder to offer an opinion
as to the merits of Jenkins’ explanation it would be necessary to have
disclosure of the archive materials to which he refers and the data for the
relevant period.
On Page 21 Jenkins does not recall the discussion we had re: travellers cheques
when I attended his office. My handwritten notes made at the time do include
reference to travellers cheques. I have not had access to a system to explicitly
check out the scenario in the manner that Jenkins has. Indeed, Jenkins does not
contest my record of his statement in my report at 4.14 where he explains that
all the test environments have been de-commissioned. I am therefore puzzled
as to how he was able to conduct his investigation on a version of the system
relevant to the Misra case.
On Page 24 Jenkins narrows the consideration of the Transaction Corrections
to those he believes are relevant. Whatever the merits of our different
approaches Jenkins is unable to deal with the problem that there may have been
Transaction Corrections that should have been made but which were not
offered. I would not expect to find evidence of missing transactions: we can’t
find them if they are missing.
Charles McLachlan. 5
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On instruction of Coomber Rich Solicitors
Yard House, Basingstoke, RG21 7NX
3.10 On page 27 Jenkins claims there is no explanation for the basis on
3.11
which the appendices were prepared. In fact, I sent him the full
working set of working papers including spreadsheets and an Access
database and invited him to raise any questions he might have as to
methodology immediately after our discussions on Ist October. He
acknowledge receipt of these files but did not raise any questions.
On page 29 Jenkins provides an Analysis of the Cash at branch. This is the
first time I have had sight of this investigation. Jenkins has not provided me
with the working papers or summary data by which I might test his findings. I
am therefore unable to offer an opinion as to the accuracy of his findings
Charles McLachlan
Monday 11" October 2010
Charles McLachlan.
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