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From: Alisdair Cameron,
Sent: Thur 12/11/2015
To: Neil Hayward{i
Paula Vennellsf
Subject: FW: Outreach Branch Remittances
Without forwarding the note below, can I just ask whether you were aware of this issue. If it’s all been escalated
beautifully, I have a different action than if it hasn’t... Thanks al
From: Chris Broe
Sent: 12 November 2015 12:54
To: Alisdair Cameron
Cc: Colin Pletts
Subject: Outreach Branch Remittances
Al,
On Tuesday, Mark Davis alerted me to an issue regarding an article in the latest edition of Computer Weekly (I have a
print for you). In essence it described a warning issued by CWU to members regarding issues in Horizon. This we think
was supported by an sent by the IT Help Desk (although not directly referenced) describing circumstances where it
was possible for an operator error to duplicate a transaction between an Outreach Branch and its Central Hub.
- Reading the email trail it feels like the help desk was “set-up” to the extent that the correspondent changed
mid-way through the trail from the subpostmaster concerned to a local CWU rep (who also turns out to be a
partner of the Leader) but this does not escape the fact that they should be more careful in choice of
wording.
o I have spoken to Atos COO to issue a general guideline to all staff in this respect which we will approve
© Colin is also speaking to Angela about developing standard scripts for such issues and possibly
responding to non-IT incidents directly from Chesterfield (which fixes these type of problems) to
avoid confusion
- However, we could be in danger of only “shooting the messenger” I think this is symptomatic of other issues
which have been surfaced by this episode because as I’ve followed it through I learn eg that this is a known
problem (5x in past 3 months) , for which a change has been agreed to Horizon to mitigate the operator error
and was scheduled to be released after the Christmas Change freeze.
As a business we know we need to be hyper-sensitive to Horizon issues but it feels to me as if this one has not
surfaced much earlier as it should have. I intend to take this up with FJ and my own team, but I suspect it also has
wider implications for Angela and her team, and possibly Mark Davis’s too who by directly contacting FJ on this
obtained a different version of events which I think was misleading.
As concrete actions so far
- I’ve asked Mark to use me personally as sole contact for IT in these matters (sort of agrees)
- Ive lined up FJ and internal processes for an emergency Transport of this fix into the production environment
next week
- And I’m talking to Angela to learn a bit more about the deeper specifics of the issue.
Best
Chris
Chris Broe
Chief Information Officer & Operations
Director
Post Office Ltd
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London, EC2Y 9AQ__
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