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Witness Name: lan Humphries
StatementNo. WITN05880100
Exhibits: None
Dated: 15 March 2023
Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF IAN HUMPHRIES
I, IAN HUMPHRIES, will say as follows...
1. This witness statement is in response the Post Office IT Inquiry's request,
dated 10” August 2022, to provide witness evidence pursuant to Rule 9 of the
Inquiry Rules 2006.
2. The request was made as I have been identified as an IT Service Delivery
Manager at Post Office Ltd between 2006 to 2010.
3. lcanconfirm that the above statement is correct and was employed as an IT
Service Delivery Manager between the requested dates 2006 to 2010.
4. During my employment within the role between 2006-2010, I was not
involved with the Horizon environment as my responsibility was the Post
Office Back Office application services. These do not cover any Branch
Horizon systems but limited to the End User Access which includes the
computer devices, infrastructure (i.e., Post Office networks) provided to
Post Office administrative office staff to undertake the daily duties which
include Financial, HR and Management Information systems. Such devices
are not located within Branches, and they do not have access to the
Horizon application. Some of these internal systems will obtain data from
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Horizon via file transfer delivery mechanisms for Post Office business
management information and reporting. The role facilitated service level
management and reporting; service improvement plans to maintain SLA
(service level agreements); during major incident impacting service within
my area of responsibility supporting incident managers; and input to
change management. Up to 2014 (prior to joining Atos), I had no
interaction with the Branches as none of my services were used by the
Postmasters but were restricted to just administration locations. Other
business areas had responsibility for the Horizon system.
5. Ido not believe I can provide _ further factual information to the Inquiry
falling within Phase 2 of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, as I had no
responsibility, interaction or input to the Horizon project or service up to
2015.
Advice and assistance
Please set out an overview of your role(s) within the Post Office.
6. During the period 2006-2010 I was employed by Post Office Ltd as an IT
Service Delivery Manager with responsibility for the Back Office services
described in paragraph 4. These environments fit within the End User
Compute service, providing access to and hosting of the operational
services such are file servers, MI reporting, POL Finance and POL HR.
The role provided management of the contracted IT service to ensure
agreed levels and tasks were carried out by the incumbent provider. It
would ensure the correct focus and support were assigned to an IT
issue to maintain the availability for end users (POL admin colleagues).
My role was not involved with the business data aspects of the
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systems, it only focused on ensuring the availability IT services I was
assigned to (as above)
Please describe any qualifications you had.
7. ITIL Service Management Managers Certificate - v2.0, ITIL Service
Management v3.0.
Please set out any training you received.
8. None during the period, except for on the job learning of new processes
and functionality changes. Knowledge and experience of IT
environments gained from previous employment gave me the
necessary knowledge to cover the expected understanding of the
technical aspects to assist in the role.
9. Position maintained with Post Office as IT Service Delivery Manager until
TUPE'd in 2014 to an external IT company, Atos, as part of the Post
Office IT outsourcing arrangements. Post Office outsourced their IT
function to an external company, as my role moved, I was TUPE’d to the
external company. The only real change to my role at the time was a
change of employer. All other daily duties, contacts and responsibilities
for the Post Office account remained as before. That is as an IT Service
Delivery Manager for the Back Office Systems.
10. Following my transfer to Atos the role continued as previously with the
main difference of acting on behalf of Post Office, rather than being
employed by Post Office. In the interest of continuity, the service
management assignments continued as before the transfer i.e. as
described in paragraph 4.
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From 2015-2017 I started to assist in ensuring branches with IT
connection issues were resolved within agreed timelines, i.e. responsible
for the service management provided by BT for telephone/data lines.
Where service levels were breached escalations would be made through
BT.
As vacancies rose on the Post Office account, my responsibilities
changed and around 2016, I was asked to fill the IT Service
Management position for the provider, Fujitsu. The role was fulfilled for
approximately 12 months before I moved away from the Post Office
account to further my career with other Atos clients.
The relationship between Atos and POL in general remained at a
working level, similar as before since many of the people on both sides
facing each other did not change. Outside of this I have nothing to allow
qualification of the relationship. Atos became the IT SIAM (System
Integration and Management) provider, acting as the Post Office IT
department, a conduit to all other IT providers.
My view of the relationship between Atos and Fujitsu was limited for the
first 2 years from 2014 due to my area of responsibility. Any interaction
would be to seek technical assistance to aid the resolution of an IT issue
(non-transactional). Usually this was a conference call with other service
providers but could also involve email or telephone communications for
advice. I found them approachable and professional when called upon,
which could frequently be at short notice, offering help in the resolution of
an IT issue.
Having been assigned the Fujitsu Service my involvement increased to
include service review and reporting of the IT elements Horizon. This
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would entail conversations with Fujitsu Service Managers and Support
Desk where the issue had been escalated (could be considered as a
compliant). Usually this was due to the time frames to resolve an issue
and were not always a result of a breached contractual target.
It is my understanding that the documented complaints procedure (ref
FUJ00080327 “POA Customer Service End-to-End Customer
Complaints Procedure”) was the process used to log and manage such
escalations that required investigation e.g. resolution of an issue as
described above.
Document ref FUJ00003244 “POLSAP Hosting Service, Service
Description” describes the service provided by Fujitsu for the POL SAP
hosting. Initially I had responsibility for the front-end SAP portal service
(the screens used by POL users) as this was hosted by one of my
assigned service providers. These boundaries are contained the section
1.1.2 of the document. The hosting element where data is stored would
be covered within the Fujitsu service, so I provided input to the Service
Manager responsible for this service. After 2015 the hosting service also
became my responsibility to manage. A monthly service review was
scheduled with Fujitsu to analysis service performance against Service
Levels, identify service improvements and review future requirements.
Please provide an overview of what contact you had with subpostmasters or
managers and assistants working in Post Offices, if any.
11.1 had no contact with Branches during the review period 2006-2010. All
contact I had was ring fenced to the Post Office admin departments as I
was not involved with the Branch/Front Office systems. Therefore, I had
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no need to contact a branch directly. A separate branch department based
in Barnsley had the responsibility for the Front Office (branch)
systems/services. Service Management had very distinct boundaries
between front-end (branch) and back-end (admin) service provision. I have
no recollection of any interaction with the Barnsley team since there was
no requirement.
12. From 2014 to 2017 contact with branches increased in assisting with
telephony connection issues. These issues ranged from faulty/poor line
quality to disconnections because of planned or unplanned actions. A
good rapport was built with many branches as they saw how I could assist
with their IT issues. Attendance at the NFSP conference in 2016 as an
exhibitor for Atos Post Office IT service gave an opportunity for face-to-
face discussions with Postmasters, an enabler to building a good business
relationship.
Please describe whether you were responsible for providing subpostmasters or
Post Office branches with advice or assistance.
13. During the Phase 2 dates 2006-2010 I had no responsibility - See item 11.
When issues were raised, how did you escalate these difficulties?
14. Escalation routes for the services I managed were defined within the SLA
agreements between Post Office and its Service Provider. None of my
managed services were supported by Fujitsu. If anything was asked of me
in relation to a branch, I would refer to the POL Fujitsu Service Manager to
take ownership.
Please specify, if you have not already done so, how often any difficulties
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involved the Horizon system.
15. During the review timeline I had no responsibilities for Horizon so would not
be involved in any management or reporting.
Were there any steps that you thought should have been taken in
response to any concerns that you raised that were not?
16.1 had no responsibility.
Was there anyone who you felt could have done more to assist or make
things better for subpostmasters.
17.My daily work did not cover any Branch systems so unable to comment. I
was not involved with the Front-End services.
Traini
If you were responsible for managing the contracts of subpostmasters, set out
what steps you took to ensure that individuals felt confident with using Horizon.
18.1 had no responsibility.
If someone said that he or she did not feel wholly confident with using Horizon
what steps did you take to assist them?
19.1 had no responsibility as the service was not within my own portfolio.
Please explain whether you thought that any improvements could have been
made to the training received by subpostmasters.
20.1 had no responsibility for the Horizon service so I was not involved with
any training.
Errors or issues with Horizon system
Please explain whether you were aware of any issues or problems with the
Horizon system.
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21. Until the reports were raised by the media, I had no awareness of underlying
issues since I had no direct involvement with Horizon. From within the Post
Office environment my perception was Fujitsu was held as POL’s main and
trusted partner so confidence in their expertise was accepted.
If so, please set out who you received this information from or how you came to
be aware of these issues and how widely known you consider them to have
been.
22. Visibility of issues first derived from the Computer Weekly report. Until
published I had no awareness of anyone knowing of such issues.
How did this knowledge impact upon how you dealt with subpostmasters or Post
Office managers or assistants working in Post Office branches.
23.At the time I had no direct contact with Post Office Branches. Whether
the report was right or wrong, my IT customer service experience has
always and will continue to be respectful of customer. That is to listen,
understand and find a way to help. This report would have made no
difference to how I approached my work.
Please consider POL00028742 “Peak Incident Management System record —
PCO247207", POL00029908 “Email: 17991774 I 2248433] Dalmellington
Qutreach Service — horizon I transaction discrepancies #1358666” _and
FUJ00085838 “Email: 17991774 I 2248433] Dalmellington Outreach Service —
horizon I transaction discrepancies #1358666”.
Please describe how responsibilities were divided between Fujitsu, Atos, POL
and NBSC
24. The role of Atos was to act on behalf of Post Office to ensure IT service
issues were resolved and proactively seek improvements to obtain the
most efficient provision of service for Post Office. To aid resolution it is
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best practice to bring together the resources from internal and external
teams as necessary to cover all elements.
Fujitsu were the service provider and considered the experts for the
Horizon hosting and application support so had in depth knowledge of
the interactions within the system to be able to work through an issue.
Post Office are the users/customers of Horizon so their business
operational knowledge would provide an insight of the expected results.
Based on the above articles they would understand the accounting tasks
required.
I have limited understanding of the NBSC ways of working as there were
no requirements to be involved with the Back Office Systems. Awareness
of their role came about following my assignment to the Fujitsu Service
Management. Their input into Branch issues was necessary to identify
root causes and solutions. They were responsible for handling
operational and procedural (non-technical) issues raised by a Branch. It
is my understanding that the NBSC had the knowledge as to how a
Postmaster should carry out their duties.
In your view, how was the working relationship between the different
organisations?
25. Fujitsu were the experts on Horizon, so Post Office accepted their
advice as trusted partner. With no similar level of expertise or access, it
was very difficult to challenge this view. They had been in post for many
years as the Post Office supplier for Horizon. Atos, as a similar external
IT company had a respect for this position. However, based on general
IT practices, questions would be raised where necessary to ensure the
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ways of working for Post Office were appropriate.
It is difficult for me to express a view of NBSC as they sat as their own
individual entity developing and maintaining ways of working. Questions
were directed to them with an expectation a reply would be provided.
Please explain the Horizon issues described in these emails and the nature
of your involvement with these matters. How were these issues resolved?
26. Based on the information within the articles, an outreach branch transferred
money form the core to the outreach branch. The outreach when accepting
the transfer accepted 4 amounts. Fujitsu discovered within their activity logs
that an action to logout had occurred before the Postmaster had fully logged
on. This was identified as the root cause. Reading the articles a
preventative work around involving awareness to Postmasters of the
scenario was provided while a code fix was developed, tested, and
deployed.
My only involvement was to provide mentoring advice in relation to the Post
Office organization to enable my colleague to talk to the correct people
following the escalation. This was due to my many years of service with
Post Office.
Not leading on this issue and the time when the event took place, I have no
recollection of any further involvement.
Did you give instruction to NBSC to speak to Post Office Branches about
this matter or any other Horizon related matters? If not, who at Atos or
Fujitsu was responsible for giving NSBC such instruction?
27. As I was not the Service Delivery Manager responsible for the Fujitsu
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service at the time, I can almost be certain no instructions would have been
given by myself. From the articles Atos took advice from several sources to
understand the course of actions. In line with process, Fujitsu would have
Passed the details through the to the Atos IT Service Desk who in turn would
contact the NSBC lead. This same process would be adopted for any
tequirement like this. The IT Service Delivery Manager would be kept
informed of status.
How effective did you think NBSC’s advice to subpostmasters was?
28.Without any evidence of the call, it is impossible to answer. Based only the
articles provided, a coordinated investigation had proceeded the event with
involvement of appropriate parties, and my expectation would be that the
information should have been used in contact with the branch. Fujitsu
provided a root cause to Atos and NBSC. It is noted Fujitsu advised of the
action for NBSC to follow. Without follow on information I can make no
conclusion.
Please consider FUJ00120883 “Peak Incident Management System record —
PCO241242” , FUJ00120884 “Email: PCO241242 / A7701255 — Meanwood
Branch — Unable to Connect to the Data Center” and FUJ00120885 “Email:
PCO241242 / A7701255 — Meanwood Branch — Unable to Connect to the
Data Center .
Please explain the Horizon issue described in these emails and the nature of
your involvement with this matter. How was the matter resolved?
29. Postmaster lost connection in branch with the Data Center (network
issue) resulting in a failure to void Health Lottery transaction. This
rendered counter device 4 unusable as it could not perform the recovery.
Fujitsu asked, as there was no impact to the customer or branch, for the
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failed lottery session to be removed to allow the recovery process to
complete.
Within Atos I was assigned internal responsibility for monitoring and
working with our IT Service Desk service. As they received the incident I
was asked for assistance to resolve the issue. Due to my work
experience within Post Office, my Line Manager requested my
involvement to obtain the documented process for the authorization of a
session deletion which had no branch or customer impact. Since no
document was available, I had to find some awareness of the process to
resolve the issue. My actions were to contact Anne Allaker and Rebecca
Barker, POL, to seek the approval as the task required Post Office
authorization and not IT or the branch. Following several re-directions,
the approval was given, and Fujitsu asked to proceed.
Please explain the Horizon issue described in these emails and the
nature of your involvement with this matter. How was the matter
resolved? Consider POL00002492 Peak Incident Management System
record — PCO241242 “
30. Please refer to answer provided in paragraph 29. This document relates
to the same issue.
Please consider POL00002493 Peak Incident Management System record —
PCO241528”.
Please explain the Horizon issue described in these emails.
31. Due to the elapse time since this occurred, I am unable to recollect
whether I had any involvement other than advisory as I had been
involved with the mentioned Meanwood Branch issue, outlined in
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paragraph 29.
From the article text, there was no impact to the customer or branch, so
a session deletion was authorized.
Please consider POL00002702 “IT Issues Conference Call Agenda”
Please describe the nature and purpose of the ‘IT Issues Conference Calls’. How
frequently would these calls take place? Who would usually attend?
32. The meeting detail is vague but I believe it to be a monthly meeting between
POL - Ann Allaker, Kendra Dickinson and Atos — Sharon Brearley(?) and
myself. The aim was to improve the working relationship with NBSC
providing ATOS with complete visibility of Branch IT Service concerns and
issues. Actions were taken to improve any identified issues raised during the
meetings.
Please describe the nature of the balancing issues that were reported to you on
this occasion.
33.1 have no recollection of specific incident, my role facilitated investigations
and improvements across several IT services provided daily to POL. The
specific detail of a single incident that occurred 8 years ago is not something I
can recall.
Who reported the issues to you?
34. Generally service issues were reported to the Atos IT Service Desk, and if
they were considered high impacting, the detail would be flagged to a Service
Delivery Manager to assist with further investigation. Several routes for
reporting issues were in place. Agreed escalation processes via the Atos IT
Service Desk were in place (as above), but this could be by-passed through
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customer/service provider meetings or delegation from Atos management due
to receipt of a request from Post Office management. In all cases, an incident
record was created to maintain tracking.
Please explain why the issues were referred back to NBSC.
35. Branch procedural calls would be the responsibility of the NSBC to
investigate. Dependant on available detail and number of tickets, NBSC
would have been asked to review to provide clarification on the situation.
Outcomes from investigations would then be used to assess the assignment
of appropriate support teams (internal and external to POL). This would have
followed standard IT incident management practice for investigating issues.
What is your view, and the views of others at ATOS, on the effectiveness of
communications between PO, FJ and ATOS?
36.1 cannot comment on the view of ATOS as I am no longer in their
employment, clarification on this would require ATOS representation.
In my opinion overall communication was good between all parties utilising a
variety of mediums, conference calls, face to face meetings and email. Atos
ways of working ensured we communicated in a timely and clear manner
especially to POL as they were the customer. This frequently included
messages and calls out of office hours weekdays and weekends.
Do you consider this could have been improved? If so, how?
37. Improvements at the time would have been identified and implemented if
necessary. This was the aim of introducing such a meeting with NBSC to
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provide a regular checkpoint to gather and improve/resolve issues impacting
the delivery of the overall IT service.
How did the effectiveness of these communications improve after 2015?
38.My involvement with the Branch services started after 2015 so I cannot
compare to previous years. However from the service improvements
implemented after this period, there was emphasis on communications to
service providers, Post Office teams and Postmasters. An increase in my
direct contact with the Branches started to build a relationship and provided a
foundation to widen discussions with Postmasters concerning the IT service
(not accounting). The aim of contacts was to demonstrate that we cared and
listened to them, while demonstrating we were working with them.
Resoluti fdi
Please explain whether you were involved in or party to any disputes between
the Post Office and subpostmasters regarding any alleged shortfalls of money.
39.1 had no involvement.
If so, please describe the process by which any disputes were raised and
resolved. Please specify any individuals you know to have been involved.
40.N/A.
Please describe whether you are aware of any contact or input from Fujitsu
in the resolution of any disputes. If so, please provide details including the
names of relevant individuals from Fujitsu.
41.1 had no involvement.
Please give your view on whether there could have been any improvement in this
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process.
Please identify who would have been responsible for implementing any
improvement you suggest.
42.1 had no involvement in the service so no visibility of data or contacts.
Are there any other matters that you consider the Chair of the Inquiry should be
aware of?
43. The Front and Back Office systems were separately supported and
managed until the new service model was introduced with Atos. All
issues relating to the Horizon system would be raised and managed
through the Front Office Service Management team. Ina similar
manner Back Office service issues were contained within my area.
Most of my work in Post Office was within the Back Office area.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: 15/03/2023
Index to First Witness Statement of lan Humphries
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11
10 I POLO0029908
POL00028742
No. I URN Document Description Control Number
1 FUJ00080327 POA Customer Service End-to-End POINQ0086498F
Customer Complaints Procedure
2 FUJ00003244 POLSAP Hosting Service, Service
Description POINQ0009415F
3 I FUJ00120883 Peak Incident Management System
record ~ PCO241242 " BONQ012 7075
4 I FUJ00120884 Email: PCO241242 /A7701255- —Ipoinqo127076F
Meanwood Branch — Unable to
Connect to the Data Center
5 I FUJ00120885 Email: PCO241242 /A7701255- —IpoNQo127077F
Meanwood Branch — Unable to
Connect to the Data Center _ _ __
6 I POLO0002492 Peak Incident Management System I yjs00003506
I record —PCO241242
7 I POL00002493 Peak Incident Management System I 500003507
record —- PCO241528
8 I POLO00002702 _I IT Issues Conference Call Agenda_IVIS00003716
9 I FUJ00085838 Email: 17991774 I 2248433] IPOINQ0092009F
Dalmellington Outreach Service—
horizon I transaction discrepancies
#1358666
~— I Email: 17991774 I 2248433]
Dalmellington Outreach Service —
horizon I transaction discrepancies
#1358666
Peak Incident Management System
record — PCO247207
POL-0026390
POL-0025224
I