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Witness Name: Kay Barrett
Statement No: WITN07240100
Dated: 8" February 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST DRAFT WITNESS STATEMENT OF KAY BARRETT
I, Kay Barrett, will say as follows:
1. I work in the IT sector and have done since March 2001 when I was
employed by Fujitsu Services (then ICL) on the Horizon System Helpdesk.
This was my first IT support role and I worked at their Wakefield location
(WAK01) providing support to postmasters using the Horizon EPOS
(Electronic point of sale) system.
2. We received training from other more senior agents on the helpdesk in the
form of in-person workshops and the shadowing of agents taking live calls
before we took calls ourselves. We received support from other agents
during our first weeks.
a. We would work a normal day Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and
Friday (e.g. a 9-5 shift) where we would take calls from postmasters
having issues with their Horizon system, help them to navigate the
menus, troubleshoot technical issues and log and assign calls to
other teams for further assistance. Every Wednesday we worked a
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12-hour shift as this was the day the postmasters did stocktaking
and accounting and they needed extra support to do this using the
Horizon system. There were some occasions we would work
Saturday mornings also.
. On Wednesdays during stocktaking and accounting there were
calls from postmasters who had arrived at a financial discrepancy in
their system and needed our assistance in resolving the issue.
Usually, these discrepancies were a result of the actions being
carried out in the system being done in the wrong order, for
example if some stock units were “rolled over” before certain
“remittance” actions were done.
. The most common types of calls we received were: postmasters
asking how to navigate the menus in the Horizon system to find a
particular item: the receipt printers not working or getting jammed.
tills not turning on or booting up properly, and financial discrepancy.
errors (on Wednesdays only).
. If we could not resolve these errors, then more senior agents, team
leaders or managers were available to assist. In the case of
technical errors, we would log the issue in our call logging system
and assign the ticket to a second line team or an engineering team.
. The team was managed by a structure of team leaders and
managers, and there was an overall manager of the Wakefield and
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Stevenage helpdesks.
f. The agents on the Horizon System Helpdesk were positive and
helpful and I do not remember there being any negative attitudes
towards postmasters or subpostmasters.
4. In my view the agents on the Horizon System Helpdesk tried their utmost
to provide adequate support to postmasters and subpostmasters.
5. We were aware that there were “features” within the Horizon System
during the stocktaking and accounting process that postmasters required
our assistance with, and that was the reason for the12-hour shift on
Wednesdays.
I would describe a “feature” in this instance as the way a product is
designed to work to achieve a desired result, in that if the product is used
in a different way it would not produce the same result.
They were never described as bugs, errors, or defects.
6. There is nothing else I can think of that the Chair should be made aware
of relating to the Horizon IT Project.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: Korum 2023
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