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Witness Name: Nicola Reeves
Statement No.: WITNO7300100
Dated: 10 April 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF NICOLA REEVES
I, NICOLA REEVES, will say as follows...
INTRODUCTION/ PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
1. 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 dated 4"
January 2023 (the “Request’).
2. I had various Post Office Counters Ltd branch office roles from May 1995 to
August 1999, including managerial roles. In August 1999 I moved to the role
of “BSM Trainer’ for the Network Business Support Centre (NBSC). The
Horizon project was still in progress at that time, with the roll-out expected to
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start later that year. I retained the BSM Trainer role until I left Post Office Ltd
in April 2003.
TRAINING AND/OR INSTRUCTIONS RECEIVED IN RELATION TO HORIZON IT
PROJECT AND NBSC
3. I received the standard Horizon training, which was delivered face-to-face
over several days.
4. After that, I was part of the project team to enable the support/operations of
Horizon (rather than management of the Horizon system or any supporting
infrastructure). Over a few months, I was embedded in the project and spent
that time preparing for the start of the training for NBSC staff, to support the
Horizon roll-out to the post offices. There were “dummy” Horizon terminals for
project members to experiment with.
5. The NBSC was a new structure, somewhat initially staffed by members of the
regional help desks, which were to be replaced by the NBSC. I worked closely
with colleagues on the design and implementation of the various processes
and systems which would be used by the NBSC: IT Service Management
(ITSM) processes, such as incident management and problem management;
call handling procedures; the ITSM ticketing/management system (Remedy);
and the telephony system. There were probably other categories and
examples of processes and systems with which we worked; the ones I have
listed are the main categories which come to mind.
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WORKING IN THE NBSC
6. The NBSC had two tiers of support for post office staff: “Tier 1” and “Tier 2”.
7. The Tier 1 function was the first point of contact for post office staff and was
_ outsourced to a third party, SSC. The queries which couldn't be resolved by
the Tier 1 function were escalated to Tier 2, which was a function retained by
Post Office Ltd and staffed by Post Office Ltd employees as part of the NBSC.
8. I was responsible for the training of the Business Service Management (BSM)
business unit as a whole. Most members of staff in BSM were part of the
NBSC, and the training activities were focused on the NBSC, and on the Tier
2 function in particular.
9. I soon had a small team of two additional trainers, and we organized and
provided the full training for Tier 2 staff, including:
a. Post Office Counters training: the full three-week course which all Post
Office Counters branch office staff (but not sub post office staff) had to
attend. This was to ensure that Tier 2 staff understood all the
transactions and paperwork involved in running an office, and how to
balance a stock.
b. Horizon training: this was provided in-house by me and my team.
There were “dummy” Horizon terminals in the training rooms and
throughout the NBSC.
~ Call handling procedures: again, in-house training, which covered the
transfer of calls to and from Tier 1.
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d. ITSM system training: in-house training which covered the use of the
Remedy system to create tickets for incidents and other events.
e. Soft skills training: in-house training on how to deal with post office staff
who were upset or distressed, and who needed particular care. This
was an important part of the training: most post office staff who
contacted the NBSC did so because they were experiencing difficulties.
10. After this initial training, Tier 2 staff received weekly training on subjects such
as new Post Office products/services, changes to Horizon, and on areas of
work which could be improved (determined by systems/records analysis and
observed behaviour). This training consumed up to four hours per week.
11.All training materials were fully developed, standardized and authorized by
NBSC management. The Kirkpatrick method of evaluation was used to
ensure that the training was effective.
12.1 was involved in various small projects, as continual improvement was at the
heart of BSM and the NBSC. The only large project I was involved in was the
“Banking” project, which enabled post offices to pay benefits/allowances to
customers by means of debit card withdrawal (including the Post Office Card
Account), and for that same functionality to be used for customers who
wanted to pay for services in post offices by card. I worked on this project
from February 2002 until I left in April 2003. Again, the focus was on preparing
the NBSC for the operational support of these changes, rather than on the
Horizon system itself.
13.Another activity I performed was to assist the Post Office Ltd legal team with
their preparations for prosecutions of subpostmasters. This assistance was in
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the form of giving advice on the operation of the Horizon system (as I was an
experienced user) and finding and commenting on incident records which
related to the sub-post office under question.
SUBPOSTMASTERS REQUESTS FOR SUPPORT
14. For clarification, the NBSC supported all types of post offices, including
branch offices as well as sub post offices. Branch office staff were employed
directly by Post Office Counters Ltd/Post Office Ltd. :
15.Post Office staff had a single telephone number to request support. 70% of
the calls were routed to the NBSC office at Dearne House (Barnsley) and the
rest went to the NBSC office at Doxford. All calls were initially handled by Tier
1. Incidents/requests which could not be resolved by Tier 1 (either at Dearne
House or Doxford) were routed to Tier 2, which resided at Dearne House. The
corresponding records/tickets in the Remedy system were also transferred.
16. Usually, the transfers were “live”, meaning that the caller was asked to hold
while the call and information were transferred to Tier 2. At busy times, the
callers were told that they would be called back by Tier 2. Tier 2, with its team
leaders, was the final line of support. There was nothing left unresolved by
this function.
17.Occasionally, other teams were asked to contribute to the support with their
expert knowledge, but Tier 2 remained the owner of the incidents and were
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accountable for their resolution. Rarely, incidents were passed to ICL
Pathway/Fujitsu for resolution.
18. Tier 2 knowledge, in addition to the training, was supported by a
comprehensive knowledge base which was continually worked on by a team
of several people and which was maintained under strict change control.
Knowledge articles were linked to incident categorisations and this way of
working was crucial to the standardization and quality of incident resolutions
provided by Tier 2.
19.1 was not responsible for the management of the Tier 2 function or any of its
staff. These are the salient parts of the organization of Tier 2 in relation to my
role of BMS Trainer.
20.1 was not responsible for the support provided to Post Office staff.
21.1 was not responsible for managing or resolving the calls.
22. The attitude of the NBSC members was the same to all Post Office staff who
needed support, regardless of the type of post office in which the staff worked.
23.The NBSC Tier 2 staff were selected, trained and continually coached to
provide the best quality of staff to callers. The Tier 2 staff were hard-working,
dedicated and caring people who were interested in the success of Post
Office Ltd as a whole, which included all types of post office. NBSC staff
worked many hours of unpaid overtime to support the post office staff,
particularly on Wednesdays, when the weekly balancing in the post offices
took place.
24. The support provided by Tier 2 was excellent.
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25. It should be noted that subpostmasters often had great difficulty in balancing
and sometimes did not understand the basic premise of a receipts and
payments balance. This was not an issue of Horizon knowledge but more the
rubrics of performing a weekly balance. The Tier 2 staff worked tirelessly to
support such subpostmasters who had very basic knowledge of how to runa
sub post office.
KNOWLEDGE OF BUGS, ERRORS, OR DEFECTS
26.1 do not recall any significant bugs, errors or defects.
FURTHER INFORMATION
27. There is nothing else that comes to mind which is pertinent to the role I held.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: 10.04.2023
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