The Post Office and its subpostmasters will no longer rely on audit data from Fujitsu once it completes a project to replace its current audit system.
Legacy Horizon data will begin to be migrated from Fujitsu to a Post Office cloud system early next year. It will also house data from the Post Office’s future branch technology.
Over the past 25 years, data from Horizon was requested by the Post Office via audit record queries (ARQs). This data could have proved the subpostmasters were not to blame for unexplained shortfalls in their branches, but the Post Office was reluctant to use it because it had a limit on how many requests it could make for free before Fujitsu charged.
“We are in the process of replacing the current audit solution for Horizon with a modern, cloud-based system that will ultimately contain audit data for both legacy Horizon and also our transformed branch technology estate,” Post Office IT chief Andy Nice told Computer Weekly.
Word of the plan emerged during evidence at the Post Office scandal public inquiry from Fujitsu boss Paul Patterson last week. He told the inquiry that Horizon data, including all historical data, would be inside the Post Office’s house by February. “They’ll have all the data that is required,” he said.
Nice told Computer Weekly: “We are in the middle of finalising the migration design, working both with Fujitsu as the current provider of Horizon audit storage and partners who are helping design this strategic solution.”
The Post Office plans to start testing after Christmas and will begin the migration of data in early 2025.
The cost of ARQs is a controversial aspect of the Horizon scandal. Judge Peter Fraser said in his 2019 judgment in the High Court battle between the Post Office and subpostmasters: “… audit data should have been sought in every case where a subpostmaster was possibly going to be suspended or have their contract terminated, that the Post Office acted unreasonably in failing to seek such data before those events occurred, and that the commercial arrangements between the Post Office and Fujitsu did not justify the failure to seek the audit data, which was the best evidence of what had occurred and whether any bugs, errors or defects were operative.”
Asked whether the cost of ARQ data was a “significant issue for the Post Office”, during a public inquiry hearing in December 2023, former Post Office investigator David Posnett said: “I would say yes on the basis that costs and money spent throughout the Post Office [were] not frowned upon but we had to keep a tight rein on every penny spent.”
Nice said on completion of the migration project, the Post Office would “no longer be reliant on Fujitsu for the provision of data via the ARQ process and this solution opens up the possibility of giving subpostmasters more direct access to their branch audit data”.
He added: “This will be looked at as part of our overall technology transformation roadmap as we overhaul not only the trading elements of the Horizon platform but also the functionality that supports postmasters to run their branches efficiently and with confidence.”
In a recent interview with Computer Weekly, Nice, who is tasked with replacing the Horizon system, asked subpostmasters to judge him on his actions.
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).
