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Witness Name: John Edward Paul Newitt
Statement No.: WITN08050100
Dated: 9103 log 23
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF JOHN EDWARD PAUL NEWITT
I, John Edward Paul Newitt, will say as follows
INTRODUCTION
1. 1am a former employee of Fujitsu and held the position of CM Tools Support
Manager until I retired in October 2003.
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 dated 23 January 2023 (the
“Request’).
BACKGROUND
3. I have been asked to provide details of my professional background and role on
the Horizon IT Project.
4. In respect to my professional background,
I. I worked for ICL (and its predecessors and subsidiaries) throughout by career
apart from a 6-month gap in 1984.
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Il. [joined ICL as a programmer in 1965 and worked on several IT systems.
lll. In 1969, I moved to Swansea to assist DVLC in the Centralised Vehicle
Licensing System. I was a Chief Programmer leading about 12 staff, both
customer and ICL.
IV. In 1974, I returned to Reading and worked on several small projects, leading
up to development manager of an accounting package. When this was
acquired by another company, I went with the package but re-joined ICL after
6 months.
V. From 1984, I managed the development of accounting packages for local
government.
VI. In about 1996, I joined the Horizon IT Project and remained on it until I retired
in 2003.
Vil. I was a member of the British Computer Society.
5. In respect of my role on the Horizon IT Project, I need to first state that it is almost
20 years since I left the project upon retirement, so my recollection is somewhat
vague. I joined the project in its early stages in about 1996. When I left, my role was
defined as CM Tools Support Manager. In this, I was responsible for providing
technical support and training to about 300 internal users for the PinICL and PCMS
tools.
KEL system
6. I have been asked questions regarding the KEL system.
7. I have no knowledge of the KEL system. I don’t recall that it was dealt with within
my team.
PinICL and PEAK systems
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8. I have been asked to provide my views on the PinICL and PEAK systems and
their adequacy in managing active service tickets, together with how service tickets
were controlled.
9. In respect to the PinICL and PEAK systems, I have no knowledge of the PEAK
system; it is possible that it was introduced after my retirement as there were initial
discussions on a replacement of PinICL. In my time, I think that most incidents
recorded in PinICL were generated by internal test teams.! do not recall the term
“service tickets”. I do not recall the mechanism of how external incidents were
entered into PinICL but it might have been by SSC. As a tool, I don’t think that
PinICL distinguished the source of the incident, internal or external. Teams were
able to generate lists of outstanding critical incidents and I recall that these were
considered at daily meetings of a senior team. I cannot recall any issues being
raised by members of this daily team of the inadequacy of the information provided
by PinICL.
10. In respect to the control of service tickets, as stated above, I do not recall the
term.
ssc
11. I have been asked various questions regarding the SSC.
12. In respect to all these, I was not a member of SSC. From what ! recall in my last
few months, we had discussions with the SSC on their taking over the responsibility
for the support of PinICL and rewriting it. I cannot provide any further information on
the SSC.
Identification and rectification of bugs, errors or defects
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13. I have been asked to comment on matters dealing with certain bugs in the
Horizon system.
14. In respect to these matters, my role did not involve dealing with specific bugs
unless they were within the PinICL system itself. At no time was I involved in specific
external (i.e. customer) bugs which are the subject of this inquiry.
Remote access
15. I have been asked to comment on my use of remote access.
16. In respect to this, I think that the only remote access I used was to access
emails; I rarely worked at home as my manager did not agree with it. I might do it
when ill or if I needed some uninterrupted time to write a document. I did not access
any SSC systems.
General
17. I have been asked about advice and assistance to SPMs, causes of problems
with using the IT system and what changes could have been made to improve the
advice and assistance.
18. In respect to these questions, I had no dealings with SPMs. Nor can I recall any
discussions within Fujitsu concerning problems being experienced by the SPMs.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
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