POL00128841
POL00128841
Minutes of Meeting Confidential / Legally Privileged/ Do not Share
GLO CONTINGENCY PLANNING GOVERNANCE
Finsbury Dials / Telephone Conference
18 July 2019 ; 16:00pm
Attendees: Ben Foat (BF), Andy Parsons (AP), Alan Watts (AW), Rodric Williams (RW), Melanie Corfield (MC),
Catherine Hamilton (CH), Julie Thomas (JT), Nick Beal (NB), Zoe Brauer (ZB), Kate Emanuel (KE), and Alex Collins
(AC), Andy Knowles, Ben Cooke (BC)
Apologies: Amanda Jones (Aj), Kirsten Massey (KM), Angela Van-Den-Bogerd (AVDB), Stuart Nesbit (SN) Patrick
Bourke (PB), Aimee Daughters (AD)
Agenda
Brands Database
Polsap to Azure
Fileshare
Horizon Fail Over
Trial 3
Settlement
Operational Impact
Costs Update
A.O.B
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1 Brands Database
Recap of the purpose of the Brands Database and current action to remove customer data in order to
reduce amount spent on storage devices.
It was confirmed that data on these databases consists purely of customer data and is used to market
other products to existing customers and is not at all used for Postmaster remuneration.
As such, it was agreed that deletion of these files could continue.
2 Polsap to Azure
BC: Post Office currently hosts historic data that includes cash movements in supply chain and cash
corrections.
This is locked and is only ever unlocked to retrieve information.
The data has been migrated to Microsoft Azure with multiple checks along the way to ensure that there
is no data lost — BC and experts have verified this.
BC: Can we get rid of these drives which currently cost £25,000 per month to maintain.
AP: Legal threshold is that there have been reasonable steps taken to preserve the data.
BF: Legal position is understood, but given the criticisms in the Common Issues judgment, deleting
originals does expose Post Office to the risk of being seen as not acting transparently.
Decision: Decision to deactivate drive to be deferred until September, following the the appeal and
Horizon Trial judgment.
3 Fileshare
BC: When POL separated from Royal Mail, legacy data was stored on Fileshare which is a shared site
maintained on DXC’s servers.
This costs £4,400 per month to maintain.
Files contain a wide range of data (music files, other personal files) and it is unverified as to whether or
not there are files which would be useful to the trial.
BF: Legal position is the same as above and so deleting originals exposes Post Office to the risk of being
seen as not acting transparently.
POL00128841
POL00128841
Minutes of Meeting Confidential / Legally Privileged/ Do not Share
Decision: Decision to deactivate drive to be deferred until September, following the appeal and Horizon
Trial judgment.
4 Horizon Fail Over
Required to undertake BCDR testing on Horizon System
BC confirmed that there is a back-up system if Horizon gets shut down and that any historic data will not
be affected or corrupted.
5 Trial 3
Focus for the 3" Trial still not decided but the proposal is that the focus of Trial 3 is on losses
BF stressed that this application needs to be made by the claimants.
6 Settlement
Work surrounding criminal convictions will need a full review with additional criminal law support and
should be conducted in the context of the Horizon Trial decision.
It might be the case that POL publishes a position which acknowledges the Horizon decision — the
message will depend on the result of such a review.
7 Operational Impact
There is a new Head of Loss Prevention and new CEO.
Work though the table of actions is being worked through and refresh plans will be checked by the Legal
Team.
Work being conducted to identify causes of losses and what can be done to prevent them.
50 Page table of actions to be circulated.
8 Costs Update
AVDB is working on a budget for the full FY and is due to bring it to the next team meeting.
MU to send BF the contingency plan
9 No other business
Actions
No Description __ : S : Owner Status
1__I Decide whether POLSAP and Fileshare databases can be deleted SteerCo On Hold
2 Continue to work through operational Table of Actions JT In Progress
3 Send Refresh Plans to Legal for review JT In Progress
4 I AVDB to bring budget at next SteerCo AVDB In Progress
5 MU to send BF the contingency plan MU In Progress
Author of Minutes: Alex Collins
Date: 18 July 2019