POL00254556
POL00254556
From: Mark Underwoodé,
Sent: Tue 17/04/2018 9:41:56 AM (UTC)
To: Thomas P
Ce: Melanie Corfield[
Subject: RE: 100 Technical Horizon Documents
Attachment: _DOC_38540921(1)_Review of Horizon Documents for Reputational Risk.docx
Dear all (+ Mel who I have copied subsequent to flagging my error to her yesterday),
Further to the below, please find attached the output of WBD’s review of the 100 technical Horizon documents to
assess the extent to which they contain commentary that could potentially cause Post Office reputational damage.
This was received this morning and I have pasted below WBD’s summary:
“The majority of the documents disclosed to Freeths are design specification, architecture and explanatory notes on
the introduction of new functionalities, reconciliation processes and back office accounting functions within Horizon.
The documents are technical documents which do not tend to include commentary or opinion.
Some of the documents comment upon incidents which have or could occur in Horizon. These documents also explain
how the errors were/could be detected, resolved and the steps put in place to ensure that the error would not occur
or reoccur. This has mitigated the risk of these documents being harmful to Post Office as it is already an accepted
fact that bugs/errors occur in Horizon. The key matter is that these are anticipated, detected and resolved. The
documents show that FJ and POL have a process in place for identifying, managing and resolving these issues which is
followed”.
Save for a couple of comments included in the “Lessons Learnt from the S60 Release” (“The engineer also appeared
short on training, at least to customer eyes” and “We need to manage the front-end processes, not just wait for POL
to fail. Delays to front end requirements capture hit us badly”) I believe that if anything is picked up by Freeths it is
more likely to cause further disclosure requests and arguments about what should or should not be within scope of
the Horizon Trial (e.g the computer system in its purest sense vs also including reconciliation systems such as
POLSAP), rather than cause reputational damage.
For your information, I have a call with Deloitte this afternoon to scope their review (i.e. whether there is anything
included within the 100 documents that could potentially harm Post Office’s case and bring into question the
conclusions included their report; and / or pose a risk to Horizon, from an IT Security perspective, if they fell into the
public domain). We will also request that any such documents that are included in court bundles are placed in
separate private court bundles.
I will keep you updated.
Mark
Mark Underwood
Head of Portfolio: Legal, Risk &
Governance
2017 Winner of the
Global Postal Award Ground Floor
for Customer 20 Finsbury Street
Experience London EC2Y 9AQ
Mobile numb
POL00254556
POL00254556
From: Mark Underwoo:
Sent: 11 April 2018 19:
To: Jane MacLeod ¢
Williams'
Subject: 100 Technical Horizon Documents
Importance: High
'Rodric
Jane, Tom & Rod,
I have made a mistake. The 100 technical documents specifically requested by Freeths have already been disclosed.
This was on my instruction to WBD, subsequent to my meeting with Rob and David and receiving the attached email
from David.
Wrongly, I had not thought this was a decision that needed to go to SteerCo.
I had hoped that I would be able to delay the disclosure, pending the ‘reputational review’ that was requested at this
afternoon’s Steerco, but having since asked Amy (who was not aware during Steerco) to check whether or not these
documents have in fact already been disclosed - she has confirmed that they have been.
Amy did mention that WBD have already read through the 100 documents (reviewing them for privileged material)
and that they do not believe there is anything included in the reports that is reputationally damaging. That said, Amy
does want to re-review 12 documents and this will be completed tomorrow morning.
I have asked WBD to share amongst this distribution list, any items included in these 12 documents that they believe
could, upon further review, be reputationally damaging to Post Office.
Depending upon what is flagged by WBD, I will work this through with Comms, WBD and SteerCo as required.
This mistake sits squarely with me.
Once again, sorry
Mark
Mark Underwood
Head of Portfolio: Legal, Risk &
Governance
2017 Winner of the
Global Postal Award Ground Floor
for Customer 20 Finsbury Street
Experience London EC2Y 9AQ
Mobile number;