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Witness Name: Charles Hooper
Statement No.: WITN09560100
Dated: 14 May 2023
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF CHARLES HOOPER
I, CHARLES HOOPER, will say as follows...
INTRODUCTION
1. lam a former employee of Post Office Counters Limited (“POCL”) and I was
amember of the POCL Information Systems Strategy Unit (“ISSU”) and the
Horizon procurement assessment team. I left POCL on 30 June 1997.
INITIAL CRITICISM OF ESCHER’S RIPOSTE SYSTEM
2. Ihighlight that the ISSU had severe doubts about the solution chosen in the
procurement. The choice of an immature solution (Riposte) from a small
supplier (Escher) when there were stronger, more mature solutions in other
procurement responses from other suppliers did not sit well with me. More
significantly, one of these more mature solutions, a system called
GlobalSTORE, was owned by another division within the ICL Group and was
present in another procurement response from another supplier, but not the
ICL Pathway bid.
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3. The Horizon project was completely at odds with POCL policy and culture.
Outsourcing a mission-critical system to a third party, with a hands-off, leave-
it-to-the supplier approach had never been tried before.
4. There were two camps within POCL. The more traditional “old hands” found
it hard to accept that counter transactions were similar to those in retail and
banking and saw little benefit in looking outside POCL for evidence. The
newer staff, including myself, believed it was possible to use a Retail EPOS
system as the basis of the new Counters System and were deeply worried
when the procurement selected the ICL consortium which contained an
immature and unproven bespoke solution — the Riposte System from Escher.
RETAIL EPOS SYSTEM ALTERNATIVE
5. The main advocates for the use of Retail EPOS systems were the staff in the
POCL Information Systems Strategy Unit (ISSU) at headquarters who
consisted of Basil Shall, Wendy Powney, Rupert Lloyd Thomas and myself. I
had been a member of the procurement assessment team and had seen that
other suppliers were tendering EPOS systems at the core of their solutions.
6. From the start, the ISSU had doubts within the POCL IT Teams about the
Riposte message store from Escher. We saw that Escher had no experience
in large systems. As a key component in Horizon, we believed it was
optimistic to think ICL Pathway could manage the Escher software and
relationship.
7. The ISSU knew that ICL Retail Systems (a different division of ICL from ICL
Pathway) had acquired Post Software International (PSI) and its
GlobalSTORE product on the 10th June 1996, before the Horizon
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procurement. The PSI GlobalSTORE product was a very strong EPOS
system that was in use in many retail environments. A derivative of the ICL
GlobalSTORE EPOS system is still for sale from Fujitsu today (2023). ICL
acquired PSI and its GlobalSTORE product to strengthen their retail offer.
8. Using a known EPOS retail system would provide access to regular software
updates; sharing costs with other users. GlobalSTORE conformed to many
retail technology standards which would have aligned POCL with other
retailers; providing access to new retail developments e.g. payment cards,
special offers etc.
9. I had performed some analysis to show how Post Office transactions were
not different from typical retail transactions already supported by EPOS
system such as GlobalSTORE mentioned in paragraph 7 above. This
analysis was called the ‘Five Generic Model’.
10. The analysis was shared with ICL Pathway.
11. This debate, known as "make versus buy", continued from March 1996 and
ended on 11 September 1996 when Paul Rich (POCL Marketing) emailed
me and others to reject the GlobalSTORE approach. He said that "to
introduce a PSI solution at this stage would be dangerously risky to the
timetable. Andrew [Stott] and others estimate a delay to release 1 of up toa
year is likely. So my decision is to stick where we are." This response does
not say whether the POCL management team agreed with the suggestion to
change to a different approach, just that the change would be risky to the
timetable. At the time, it felt like the POCL management team were resistant
to alternatives because rowing back on previous decisions would have been
to admit they were wrong — they did not consider developing the EPOS idea
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further as an alternative alongside the Escher approach to mitigate the
delivery uncertainty risk of that approach. Note that I do not have a copy of
that email: the text above is from Rupert Lloyd Thomas's timeline written on
22 May 1998 (WITN09570101) which I have considered in preparation of this
witness statement.
12.Whilst I agree that changing approach would have been risky, my hypothesis
of the original approach having different and greater risks has been borne out
by the ensuing scandal.
13.Even though the decision above was made, Paul Rich was sufficiently
interested in the retail EPOS approach to take a trip to La Jolla, California, to
visit Post Software International (PSI) for a presentation of their
GlobalSTORE product on 7 October 1996. Paul Rich was accompanied by
Bob Peaple (POCL IT Director), Byron Roberts (POCL Operations) and
Wendy Powney (ISSU). The ISSU analysis had shown there was enough
doubt about the ICL approach to warrant spending money to send a team of
POCL managers to California to see an alternative retail EPOS system.
14.As I was leaving POCL, I sent a letter (WITN09560101) to John Bennett, the
ICL Pathway Managing Director offering my services to explain to ICL
Pathway why the EPOS approach was the better approach. I suggested to
work with ICL Pathway to help them understand the benefits of moving to a
retail EPOS based approach using my ‘Five Generic Model’ analysis.
15. John Bennett replied by letter (WITN0956102) saying ICL Pathway was
going to stay with the Riposte based approach. These letters are attached.
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146. Additionally, I have included a timeline of events, written by Rupert Lloyd
Thomas (WITN09570101), based on available emails and other data
available to him at the time.
Statement of Truth
Dated: (Y [5 [2023
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Index to First Witness Statement of CHARLES HOOPER
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URN
Document Description
Control
Number
WITNO9570101
Timeline of Events by Rupert
Lloyd Thomas dated 22 May
1998
I WITN09570101 I
IN
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Letter from Charles Hooper to
John Bennett re ‘Five Generic
Model’
I WITNO9560101 ;
loo
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Letter from John Bennett to
Charles Hooper re ICL Retail
Systems
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