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Witness Name: Sarah Bull
Statement No.: WITN07230100
Dated: 20 March 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF SARAH BULL
1, MS SARAH BULL, will say as follows:
INTRODUCTION
1. I am a former employee of Fujitsu Services Limited (“Fujitsu”) having left in
2011.
2. This witness statement is made to assist the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry (the
“Inquiry”) with the matters set out in the Rule 9 Request provided to me on
23 January 2023 (the “Request’), to the extent I have or had direct knowledge
of such matters. I was assisted in preparing this statement by Morrison
Foerster, who represent Fujitsu in the Inquiry.
3. I have tried to recall material relevant to the Request to assist the Inquiry as
much as possible, however as the Request concerns events that occurred over
11 years ago, there are areas where my recollection is unclear or limited. I set
out my best recollection of these events in this statement.
4. Where my recollection has been either supported by or prompted by
documents, they are referred to using document URN numbers as listed in the
index accompanying this statement.
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BACKGROUND
5. I am a technology professional with 30 years of experience, mostly in the
service delivery profession managing support and consultancy environments.
6. I was first employed by ICL PLC (“ICL”) in September 1995 and left Fujitsu in
November 2011. During that period, I worked on the Post Office Account (the
“POA’) at two separate time periods, first from April 2002 to December 2002,
and later from July 2007 to November 2011. ! set out the various roles I held
whilst working on the POA below. As a general point, I do not recall receiving
any training when joining or whilst working on the POA.
Field Service Manager
7. I was one of the several Field Service Managers between April 2002 and
December 2002. Our role was to get first-hand experience of issues
Subpostmasters were facing and support them getting a resolution. I worked
directly with Subpostmasters in their location of business, regardless of the
Post Office branch type they were in charge of. For the purpose of this
statement, I refer to them as Subpostmasters collectively.
8. Each Field Service Manager was responsible for a different area of the country.
The area I was responsible for was from Birmingham down to the south coast
between Portsmouth and Southampton.
9. The role involved visits to Post Office branches based on the analysis of calls
made by Subpostmasters to the Horizon Service Helpdesk or the Horizon
Service Desk (which I will refer to as the “Helpdesk” in this statement). Issues
ranged from supporting Post Office moves, reviewing user actions, repeat
failures, and responding to requests from third line support to gather information
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which could be used to replicate issues reported by Subpostmasters and to
diagnose issues that had a broader impact across the network.
HNG-X Service Transition Manager
10. I was a HNG-X Service Transition Manager between July 2007 and April 2008.
I was responsible for supporting the Fujitsu teams working on the POA to
prepare for changes being made to the Horizon application and the
infrastructure that Horizon used. The impact of these changes could range from
raising awareness to Horizon end-users through to updates to processes,
policies or application guidance provided to the Horizon end-users. For
clarification, the infrastructure that Horizon used was separate and different to
the Horizon application itself.
11. In this role, I worked with the project teams to understand the changes and
provided appropriate feedback. This could range from requests for additional
specificity, confirmation that the teams were ready for the change (as part of
the project sign off), or requests for additional time needed to make the
necessary changes.
12. For example, I provided awareness of these changes, such as a new feature
on the Horizon counter screen which would support the first line agents in
accurately diagnosing an issue when speaking to a Horizon end-user. In other
cases, changes to procedures might have needed to be made, like changing
the interactive voice response system to support Horizon end-users when
piloting a new feature on Horizon. I am unable to recall any specific details in
relation to these examples given.
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Customer Services Manager
13. I then took the role of a Customer Services Manager between April 2008 and
July 2010 where I was responsible for the service delivery of first and second
line support functions, namely the Helpdesk and break fix engineering
respectively. There were two or three service delivery managers, who reported
to me, who managed the individual functions. To be clear, I and the service
delivery managers did not functionally manage these services but were the
customer facing team who liaised with the customer, in this case, Post Office
Limited (“POL”) to get their feedback and provided reporting and feedback on
the services Fujitsu provided.
14. I My main responsibility was to review and validate regular reporting on contract
compliance in relation to the first and second line support functions that
reported to me. Having been shown an example of a Service Review Book that
I would have seen whilst in this role (FUJ00094419), I recall that these were
prepared by the service delivery managers in charge of first and second line
support functions, and were sent on a monthly basis to POL. The Service
Review Books were reviewed internally at Fujitsu before external circulation,
although I do not remember by who.
15. I reviewed statistics and trends to understand the performance of the Helpdesk
and any issues that may have occurred during the reporting period. Examples
of the sorts of trends included the classification of issues, Helpdesk response
time for picking up calls, the implementation of initiatives and monitoring their
effects (such as the introduction of a new button on the Horizon counter
screen). I recall that issues relating to hardware were a common issue. I also
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detailed initiatives to improve the operation of the Helpdesk, although I do not
recall any specific details.
16. I recall that Service Review Books were sent to POL ahead of monthly service
review meetings which I attended with my POL counterparts, who were Gary
Blackburn and Mark Weaver, at Chesterfield. The purpose of these meetings
was to improve the operation of the Helpdesk including the reporting of the
performance of the Helpdesk.
17. Having been shown a document titled ‘Service Management Review October
2010’ (FUJ00121051), I recall that the process of issuing Service Review Books
changed to a forum called Service Management Review. This came about after
discussions with POL, which I think I participated in, about certain challenges
and issues in reviewing the content included in Service Review Books and
ensuring relevant information was being considered. The switch to the Service
Management Review helped consolidate information that was being reported
in Service Review Books into areas that Fujitsu and POL were focused on. The
Service Management Review took place monthly at Fujitsu's and POL’s offices.
Action points that came out were allocated by function.
Head of Service Support
18. I was Head of Service Support on the POA from June 2010 to November 2011.
This meant I was the service owner responsible for the teams who provided
release management, operational change, capacity management, and service
introduction of the Horizon system.
19. To be clear, my understanding is that there is more than one type of release
management; there is release management relating to the Horizon application
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itself which is separate and different to releases affecting the operating system
that Horizon used, which I think at the time was a Microsoft Windows NT
operating system. I was only involved in the latter. The release management
function set out the schedule for release windows in relation to the maintenance
of the operating system on which Horizon operated. System maintenance is
different to application fixes which had a separate schedule.
20. Operational change management were a team of service transition managers
supporting change on the POA and working closely with the service introduction
manager. The capacity management team was responsible for asset inventory
and ensuring that the system and components could support business strategy.
I do not remember the details of what service introduction involved.
HELPDESK
21. Inthe Request, the Inquiry has asked me questions in relation to my experience
working on the Helpdesk. I am unable to answer these questions as I did not
work on the Helpdesk, and therefore cannot provide specific information about
the Helpdesk, including what an average working day consisted of on the
Helpdesk, specific details of calls received and resolutions of issues. As such,
I did not receive any training or instruction for working on the Helpdesk.
22. I can, however, provide certain details on the service delivery and overall
performance of the Helpdesk as this was within the remit of some of my roles,
including as a Customer Services Manager as described above at paragraphs
13 to 17. I also visited Fujitsu’s Stevenage office occasionally and met the
Helpdesk team that worked there. Service Delivery, of which I was a part of,
was a separate team to the Helpdesk.
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23. ‘I recall that I took part in a Lean review of the proposed improvements to the
Helpdesk service which was led by front-line agents that worked on the
Helpdesk. POL also participated in this review. I do not remember exactly when
this review took place, however having been shown the Service Review Book
for February 2010 that I would have seen and which appears to reference the
Lean review (FUJ00094419), it would have occurred around February 2010.
24. From my recollection, the proposed improvements aimed to enhance the
handling of cases in terms of efficiency and costs. Feedback from front-line
agents was collated and reviewed by POL and the agents implemented
changes to improve the Helpdesk service, although I do not recall what these
changes were.
25. The Lean review was initiated by the Helpdesk, going above and beyond
contract requirements. I recall that the Helpdesk had a good reputation and my
memory of the attitude of the Helpdesk to Subpostmasters was positive.
26. The Helpdesk was one of Fujitsu’s referenced services when speaking to other
Fujitsu customers — it was used as a demonstration of the service provided and
I believe therefore was of a high standard of service. This was based on
feedback from POL, contractual compliance, as well as the quality of service
delivery.
BUGS, ERRORS AND DEFECTS
27. The Inquiry has asked me a question on my awareness of bugs, errors and
defects in the Horizon system. At a high level, I recall that known error logs
were kept of bugs, errors and defects in the system. This is standard practice
when running a system or application like Horizon so that those bugs, errors
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and defects can be tracked from initial reporting through to resolution. The logs
came from people involved in the Horizon system including the end-users but
also the engineers who maintained the system. I am unable to recall specific
issues in relation to the Horizon application.
In terms of problem management, I understand that certain problems, such as
those that were recurring or had a more widespread impact on Post Office
branches, would have a problem record created and were reviewed by Fujitsu
(including third line support) and POL. These types of problems may not have
been able to be fixed immediately and required further investigation to assess
the severity and likelihood of recurrence of the problem. My limited involvement
in problem management was to provide details to Fujitsu's third line support
who would triage the problem.
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Statement of Truth
Signed: __I GRO:
Dated: 20 March 2023
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
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INDEX TO THE FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF
MS SARAH BULL
Exhibit URN Document Description Control No.
No.
1 FUJ00094419 I Fujitsu Services Royal Mail POINQ0100590F
Group Account Service Review
Book — February 2010
2 FUJ00121051 I Service Management Review POINQ0127243F
October 2010
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