Post Office Horizon Scandal

I recently learnt about the British Post Office Horizon Scandal where more than 900 sub-postmasters (self-employed operators of post office branches) were wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud between 1999 and 2015.

It was later determined that shortfalls shown in the accounting software were a result of poor fault tolerance. This led to inconsistent/inaccurate data - transactions that did/didn't occur, money that was supposedly withdrawn/deposited duplicated, physical stock that didn't match inventory.

Whilst these types of issues are pretty bad on their own, the shocker is that they were actively covered up by the Post Office and Fujitsu. Instead of owning up to the issues and admitting fault, they used their extraordinary powers to blame the sub-postmasters, effectively using them as scapegoats. This resulted in hundreds of wrongful convictions, imprisonment and a heavy emotional toll on families that contributed to a mental health crisis amongst subpostmasters.

The story shares similarities with Australia's own Robodebt scandal, both are perfect examples of extremely poor quality software and the systemic failures of government and big corporations to own up, do the right thing and admit fault.

If you want to know more about this story checkout the TV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office which is a dramatization of the scandal.

Also, check out Dave Farley's video on the matter. He provides good commentary on software culture, the complexity of distributed systems and the types of issues with the Horizon software.