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Witness Name: Shaun White
Statement No.: WITN05820100
Date: 16/03/2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF SHAUN PAUL WHITE
I, Shaun White, will say as follows...
1. This witness statement is provided following receipt of a Rule 9 e-mail request for
the provision of a written witness statement regarding matters falling within
Phases 2 and 3 of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, which I received on 7
October 2022.
2. I was employed by Post Office Limited from April 2000, working at the Network
Business Support Centre in Cortonwood until July 2009. During this time, I held
several roles, (I do not recall the dates of these roles) with differing
responsibilities. The sequence of my roles is as follows:
2.1.NBSC Tier 2 Advisor. My role involved working within the contact centre
support team, responding to enquiries made from Post Office staff with
regards to business procedure. This included advice and guidance enquiries
related to navigation of the Horizon System and balancing procedures. All
calls received were recorded on the support desk toolset ‘Remedy’. Remedy
2.2.
2.3.
24.
2.5.
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allowed advisors to look up process and procedure using the Remedy
knowledge base. Details of the response provided would be captured within
Remedy. This allowed for trend analysis, improvements to advice (knowledge
base information) and an audit trail to be captured. Calls would be passed to
the Horizon System Help Desk if related to a technical query.
Complaints Officer working in the small customer relations team investigating
and responding to complaints raised by Post Office staff. Complaints ranged
from those regarding staff within the NBSC, advice given, time for call back,
to complaints about other sections of the business such as Cash Handling
and distribution (incorrect remittance, failed/ late deliveries), responsible for
delivering and collecting cash from Branches. I do not recall any complaints
with regard to the weekly balance and only recall one complaint about the
Horizon System, which was regarding the need for a satellite dish and its
positioning on a listed building. This was because there was no suitable
broadband or mobile cover where the branch was located.
Trainer providing training to NBSC tier 1 and tier 2 advisors in relation to
products Services and procedures. The training was related to the launch of
new products such as the banking products, home insurance, Parcel Force
products, stamp revaluation and based upon the information published in
Counter News and the counter user guides. There was no assessment of
staff before or after training was given.
NBSC Team Leader. I was responsible for leading a small team of tier 2
advisors working on the NBSC.
Training Manager. I was responsible for a small team of trainers delivering
training to tier 1 and tier 2 staff within the NBSC.
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2.6. Problem Manager. I was responsible for the investigation of emerging and
recurring issues, performing root cause analysis to minimise adverse impact.
The role was varied and included investigation of issues that were proving
difficult to resolve and impacting some Post Office branches. Most issues
were related to repeated telephony and broadband issues which became
problematic to resolve. This was because the Public Switched Telephone
Network PSTN (phone line) into a branch could be owned by the sub
postmaster, Franchisee or Post Office depending upon whether the branch
was a Crown Office, sub post office or part of a franchise. The broadband for
the Horizon initially ran on a discrete Integrated Services Digital Network
(ISDN) but was later moved to broadband over the post office dedicated
PSTN. This being the telephone line that was in place for Post Office
business and eligible to all or some funding from the Post Office. The
broadband was provided initially by Energis and later Fujitsu. Consequently,
there were issues that resulted because of the mixed estate that was in
place; including sub postmasters ordering broad band for their own use,
which would result in the broadband for the Horizon System being disabled
and a lengthy process to get it re-installed; Difficulty in obtaining engineer
visits, because Open Reach would charge if asked to investigate a PSTN
issue and then identify an issue with the broadband. Further complicated
because Open Reach were unable to fix the broad band if they had been
asked to investigate a PSTN fault, due to the broad band being provisioned
by another supplier, any investigation of a broadband issue would have to be
initiated by the broadband supplier (Energis/ Fujitsu). This sometimes
resulted in lengthy waits after a PSTN commissioned engineer visit finding no
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fault, then needing a broadband engineer visit, which may be resolved by the
same engineer. Engineer appointments at that time were within a 40 working
hour window. Additionally, I recall examples of weather-related issues such
as the distribution point being exposed and exposed pairs which tended to
result in intermittent issues such as noise on the phone line, loss of the
Horizon System when the wind blew in a certain direction hitting the DP or
water ingress to an exposed pair following heavy rain. There was also,
internal office issues such as too much equipment sharing the telephone line,
knocking the broadband out when certain equipment was used, old extension
cabling causing interference, extra extensions and such which would be
difficult to pinpoint from an initial fault call and resulted in protracted
investigations that usually were passed to me. On occasion I would
encounter issues related to the weekly balance, maybe 3 or 4 in total, from
memory.
Qualifications
3. 8 O levels and 1 A level. National Examining Board for Supervisory Studies and
Chartered Institute of Insurance Financial Planning Certificate 1, 2 & 3.
Information Technology Infrastructure Library Foundation Certificate.
Training Received
4. 3 weeks counter training and approximately 2 weeks training in NBSC toolsets
and process at commencement of employment (April 2000).
Career Progression
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5. I started as a Postal Officer and progressed to a CM3 Manager when I became a
NBSC team leader, progressing to CM2 Manager level when undertaking the
problem manager role.
Advice and assistance
6. My role as an NBSC Tier 2 advisor involved working within a contact centre
answering telephone enquiries raised by Post Office branch staff. The calls were
varied in nature and centred around business procedures such as how to enter a
transaction onto the Horizon System, how to undertake the remittance procedure
on Horizon and procedures for dealing with parcels for example.
7. All Post Office branches had to undertake a weekly balance. From memory this
was at the close of business on Wednesday for most branches. Consequently,
from mid-afternoon on a Wednesday there would be an increase in calls related
to balance procedures. Towards the end of the day and Thursday morning the
calls tended to be balance related.
8. My role within the Customer Relations Team involved telephone contact to
understand the details of a complaint and responding to the complaint in writing
once the investigation had completed.
9. My role as a problem manager involved some contact with Post Office branch
staff when dealing with problem office issues. Problem Offices was the term used
for issues that were specific to the branch network rather than product related.
For example I would get involved with issues with mobile post offices being
unable to receive broadband due to cable faults, issues with VSAT branches
where the commissioning of the satellite was during Winter and the VSAT signal
failed during the summer because there was a tree blocking the line of site to the
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satellite, which wasn’t an issue when there were no leaves on the tree,
understanding why TransCash was being used with barcoded bills rather than
scanning the bar code, issues with the Horizon System due to broad band
connection problems as detailed earlier. This was usually by telephone to gather
a better understanding of the issue and occasionally included a visit to the branch
with representatives from Fujitsu and/or BT. A visit to the branch would be
required when either BT or Fujitsu were adamant that the fault rested with the
other party, after several engineer visits failed to resolve an issue, where an issue
repeatedly returned following a fix. Branch visits have resulted in identifying
issues with the internal telephony (extensions etc) within a branch, interference
from Christmas lights impacting the broadband making the Horizon unusable,
exposed distribution points because the cover had broken on the telegraph pole,
overloaded telephone line due to there being too many extensions and
equipment connected to the line such as fax machines, faulty telephone hand set
such as DECT phones and also resulted in the compilation of a list of devices
that when installed interfered with the broadband used for the Horizon System.
These issues were generally seen as Horizon issues by branch staff as any loss
in broadband connection would make the Horizon system unusable for online
transactions which were becoming more prevalent.
10.1 was responsible for providing advice and assistance to subpostmasters and
Post Office Branches when I worked as a Tier 2 advisor at the NBSC. This
entailed providing advice and guidance using the Remedy Knowledge base. The
system allowed you to look up business process to provide advice and guidance.
11.Additionally, tier 2 advisors had access to various publications such as Counter
news that were used as reference guides and to Horizon terminals that would
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allow navigation queries to be answered. Any answer provided would be entered
onto the Remedy system and retained to improve services and ensure that
responses were accurate. This would allow other advisors to search advice
given, should a repeat call be made or a member of staff question the advice
given.
12.1 have been asked how I escalated issues if they were raised. I don’t recall raising
any issues, but would seek guidance from a line manager, Product Manager or
other escalation route if related to another side of the business. If a
subpostmaster wanted to raise a concern these would be raised with their line
manager. I think they were known as Retail Network Managers (‘RNM’) or
something similar. From memory the name of the role changed several times.
13. Difficulties in relation to navigation of the Horizon System and how to input
certain less frequent transactions, new transactions, change in procedures and
stamp re-valuations were frequent. Wednesday PM and Thursday AM were
predominantly calls asking for help with the balance. If a call was related to a
Horizon issue such as a component failure the call would be passed to the
Horizon System help desk.
14.Occasionally, a subpostmaster or RNM would suggest that the Horizon System
was at fault if they had been unable to balance. On such occurrences the advice
was to run a manual balance alongside the Horizon generated balance, I’m not
sure if this was official Post Office advice or advice from Fujitsu. I’m not aware of
any repeat calls where this was undertaken and an issue was identified. I’m
unaware of what issues have been discovered with the Horizon System that
resulted in this Public Enquiry but feel that running a manual balance in addition
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to the Horizon balance could help identify if there was a potential system issue to
investigate.
15.1 don't recall any specific concerns being raised that were not addressed. I did
feel that more support should have been provided to some subpostmasters when
they were repeatedly having difficulties with the weekly balance. It was very
difficult to provide support over the telephone when you could not see all the
information needed to properly check the balance and it would have been better if
on-site support was available. I believe additional training was available at a cost,
but I’m not sure what other help was available.
16.I’m not sure if anyone could have done more to assist or make things better. I feel
that the RNM team would be best place to answer as they are more aware of the
support available.
Training
17.I have been asked if I was responsible for managing the contracts of
subpostmasters. I was not responsible for managing the contracts of
subpostmasters.
18.If someone said that they were not wholly confident with using Horizon, I would
advise them to seek further training or discuss with their RNM.
19.I have been asked whether I thought that any improvements could have been
made to the training received by subpostmasters. As part of my training I
undertook a 2 or 3 week counter training course before further training within the
NBSC. This was a closed course with dummy transactions within the counter
training unit. I would not have been confident being responsible for a branch
following that level of training, despite the best efforts of the trainer. The
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transactions undertaken were quite complex and varied. Some transactions were
less frequent than others and varied dependent upon office location and type.
Errors or issues with Horizon system
20.1 was not aware of any errors or issues with the Horizon system. From memory
we were assured by Fujitsu that the system was fully tested and forensically
secure. My work dealing with problem branches involved working with Fujitsu to
resolve issues.
21.Occasionally, an issue might be escalated, and I would request that one of 2
Fujitsu specialists would investigate. This usually entailed a site visit where the
Fujitsu representative would shadow the subpostmaster for a period. I don’t recall
any such activity identifying a fault with the Horizon System, during my time with
the business. The types of IT problems I dealt with were as disclosed earlier,
problems with the telephone line/ broadband other equipment causing the
Horizon System to lose connection, VSAT branches with unstable broadband
connection, issues with mobile post office branches due to the extra wear and
tear on the Horizon System causing terminals to fail, loss of broadband
connection, printer problems, issues related to certain counters, not balance
impacting, routing of power cables for the Horizon System due to the install of
attack screens in open plan branches and power issues with regards to the
Uninterrupted Power Supply for the Horizon terminal. Usually, the outcome of the
site visits was the resolution of the issue due to the correct engineer being
appointed or a fix at the time of the visit if possible due to replacement equipment
being carried by the Fujitsu representative. I was made aware of the outcome of
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any visit that I had instigated. I’m not aware of any action being taken against a
SPM by POL as a result of a visit by Fujitsu.
Resolution of disputes
22.1 have been asked to explain whether I was involved in or party to any disputes
between the Post Office and subpostmasters regarding any alleged shortfalls of
money. Occasionally, I would be contacted by Contract Managers asking if I was
aware of any issues with the Horizon System as they were dealing with a dispute.
As mentioned earlier I was unaware of any issues being found with the Horizon
system and suggested undertaking a manual balance alongside the system
generated balance to confirm if there was a system issue.
23.1 do not recall any names of individuals to have been involved. My involvement
was minimal.
24.1 have been asked to describe whether I was aware of any contact or input from
Fujitsu in the resolution of any disputes. I am not aware of any specific disputes
that received input from Fujitsu. However, my work within problem management
involved informing Fujitsu of any Post Office branch that encountered continuous
issues with IT, either due to repeated loss of broadband, repeated engineer visits
failing to resolve an issue or where further investigation was required to resolve
an issue. I had 4 or 5 contacts for such activities. Unfortunately, I'm unable to
recall all names except for Nick Crow, who would visit a Post Office branch and
spend several days shadowing staff and troubleshooting, and Leighton Machin,
who managed a team of Fujitsu staff who acted as escalation for Post Office
branch issues.
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25.1 do not recall any Fujitsu input with regards to the resolution of any disputes, but
as mentioned earlier Fujitsu would investigate any issues where there was strong
evidence to suggest an issue with the system.
26.1 feel more support should have been provided from a training perspective. In
addition to this a team that could attend Post Office branches in person to help
identify issues where repeated misbalances had been experienced would also
have been a massive improvement.
27. These should have been implemented by the Post Office board. With regards to
the support with repeated balance type issues, this should have been a regional
team and working closely with the RNM and Contract Managers.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true