Computer error

[AtW]

"Post Office admits Horizon computer defect"

The Post Office has admitted that software defects have occurred with a computer system at the centre of a bitter dispute with some of its 11,500 sub-postmasters across the UK.

More than 100 say they were wrongly prosecuted or made to repay money after computers made non-existent shortfalls.

Some of them lost their homes as a result and a few went to prison.

The Post Office said the report made clear that its computer system functioned "effectively".

Sub-postmasters, who run the smaller post offices in the UK, are not directly employed by the Post Office but are contracted to run their branches as businesses.

They are responsible for balancing the books themselves, using the Post Office's Horizon computer system which processes all transactions.

BBC News - Post Office admits Horizon computer defect

[doodab]

You wonder how long IT can hold out without a professional standards body like the GMC or engineering council.

[Paddy]

It also shows the unfairness of the courts. The Post Office is trustworthy, the computer says so; they must be right and the defendant guilty.

[AtW]

It also shows the unfairness of the courts.

What do you think courts should have done, dismiss computer evidence from Postoffice on the grounds that it can be wrong? That can happen now that the error has been established.

[Mich the Tester]

You wonder how long IT can hold out without a professional standards body like the GMC or engineering council.

It also shows the unfairness of the courts. The Post Office is trustworthy, the computer says so; they must be right and the defendant guilty.

Professional standards aren't the solution; the profession is so young and immature we can't agree on a body of knowledge or correct working practices. See the clash of waterfall and agile for example, or context driven versus factory school testing.

Paddy's got it right with 'computer says no'; people who use systems in their work need to be educated to show healthy skepticism about what it says on the screen. What the screen says is probably, but not certainly what's written in the database, which probably but not certainly what was inputted by the user or in most cases another system, filled with what te user probably but not certainly inputted, and what the user originally inputted is probably but not certainly what he thought was correct, and so on and so forth. Apply these principles in a complex environment with interactions with outside systems in which you have little insight, and it's very clear that blind trust in what it says on the screen, especially in cases of prosecutions, is very very dangerous indeed.

The consequence of blindly believing what it says on the screen can be getting an extra arse drilled into you by Bubba, or even death;

That'll be a great consolation after spending a couple of years in a cell with Bubba.

[sasguru]

Given the number of complete cretins on here who "work in IT", is it any wonder that that majority of large IT projects in the UK fail?

[Mich the Tester]

What do you think courts should have done, dismiss computer evidence from Postoffice on the grounds that it can be wrong? That can happen now that the error has been established.

'The courts' don't have the responsibility; what amazes me is that when evidence stored on computers (or shown on the screen) is used, defence lawyers don't get on the phone to software testers and 'ethical' hackers to look in all the nooks and crannies of a system to demonstrate that the 'evidence' can be flawed; it's the defence lawyers who are failing, but judges should also be made aware of this.

If I were to be accused of a crime on the basis of computer evidence, I'd want a hand picked team of testers to go through that system, and seeing as most government systems were built by Crap Gemini, Accidenture, Logicack, Crapita et al, I'd give myself a pretty good chance of finding 'reasonable doubt'.

[Pondlife]

IMVHO the sad thing is that many of these businesses are small local shops with a Post Office counter in the back. Their margins are minimal and many go to the wall each year and so being told you have to fork out an extra 5-10K will most likely see off what is very often an integral part of the local community for many, especially in rural areas.

The post office should be supporting these people, not criminalising them.

[Mich the Tester]

But how much would that cost?

A tulipload of cash

[Dominic Connor]

Expert Witness

I've worked as an expert witness and trust me when I say the going rate for such work is better than anyone here gets. It's also great fun, sadly under NDA, a small illustration being the board member of a bank asking me who I thought would play me in the film of the incident.

Sadly I don't get as much of this as I'd like.

I bring this up because the people who were wrongly convicted don't seem to have benefit of an expert witness. Because it is expensive and you can't get either forensic or expert witness assistance on legal aid.

Sub-postmasters aren't rich or even all that well paid, the idea of paying a few hundred quid an hour for someone to go through a monstrously complex system for some bug their legal team didn't even suspect was there is not a goer.

I might guess that a system like this will make an error one in 10,000 transactions or 100,000 sifting through that is hard and time consuming and one has to assume that basic testing by the GPO caught a good % of the "obvious" bugs.

So what is the solution ?