Further details have been released concerning an engagement for Fujitsu to continue to support the troubled platform, which had previously been reported as being worth £40m to the tech firm
The Post Office will spend up to £75m on the latest extension it its engagement with Fujitsu for the provision of the Horizon IT system.
It was first reported late last year that the Post Office was to extend the Horizon deal for a further 12 months, up to a conclusion date of 31 March 2026. It was initially indicated that the extra year came at a cost of £40m.
But, in a newly published commercial notice, the Post Office states that spending could reach as much as £63m – equating to more than £75m, once VAT is incorporated.
The rise from the prior figure appears to be attributable to “additional upgrades to address legacy technical debt issues estimated at £21m [which] is also included in the modification value”, the notice says.
The document explains that, with the previous agreement having been due to expire at the end of this month, a further 12 months was needed “in order to prepare the Horizon agreement for expiry and in order to receive transitional support from FSL (Fujitsu Services Limited)” as it implements a replacement arrangement.
The new one-year contract covers the “provision of additional application and service management, maintenance, development and support services under an existing software and IT services agreement” related to the Horizon platform.
Since the troubled IT system was first implemented in 1999, the value of the Post Office’s engagement with Fujitsu has risen from about £1bn to almost £3bn, as of the latest extension.
The notice announcing which claims that the Post Office could not switch to an alternative supplier because “a change of contractor cannot be made for technical reasons”.
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“The existing Horizon system is a highly complex legacy platform, written in outdated versions of software languages, and incorporates five ‘systems’ in one (i.e., financial services, banking, government services, mails, and retail),” it says. “Horizon is an ageing platform and has an inflexible monolithic architecture that makes technology change difficult. It would not be possible to simply hand this system over to another supplier. A change of contractor would result in disproportionate technical difficulties in implementation as well as operation and maintenance. Furthermore, while there are other similar systems to Horizon available on the market, there are no alternative systems that currently meet all of Post Office’s business needs without significant development or customisation.”
It adds: “Changing contractor would cause significant inconvenience and duplication of costs. It would cause service disruption, cause significant data migration issues, require substantial business change at short notice, threaten continuity of service and create risk in the transfer of know-how. Furthermore, changing contractor would result in sunk costs, including an increase in run costs, dual running costs, and additional exit/transition costs.”
Faults with the Horizon system led to almost 1,000 sub-postmasters being wrongfully prosecuted for fraud or false accounting in what is typically regarded as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Interest in the scandal grew following the broadcast last year of a major TV dramatisation – since when governments in Westminster and Holyrood have expedited programmes and legislation to effect mass exonerations and financially compensate those wrongfully convicted as a result of the defective technology platform.
Last month, PublicTechnology revealed that the Post Office had signed a tech deal worth almost half a million pounds to help automate processes supporting the payment of compensation to those affected by the Horizon scandal.
