“All the bugs and errors have been known at one level or not, for many, many years. Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs and errors and defects, which were well-known to all parties,” said Paul Patterson, co-CEO of Fujitsu’s European division. Ars Trending Video
That goes back to 1999, when the Horizon software system was installed in post offices by Fujitsu subsidiary International Computers Limited. From 1999 to 2015, Fujitsu’s faulty accounting software aided in the prosecution and conviction of more than 900 sub-postmasters and postmistresses who were accused of theft or fraud when the software wrongly made it appear that money was missing from their branches.
Fujitsu isn’t shying away from taking the blame on this which is interesting. Are they legitimately just “doing the right thing” or is there a benefit for them to just own this?
Possibly attempting some “we’ve changed now” reputation-saving. They have no hope of winning any cases against them, and probably not even of minor points of the cases.
It’s been well known that Fujitsu are to blame, there’s no benefit to them pretending otherwise and fighting any of this. I think they’ve put aside money to help with compensation claims as well so I think it’s reputation damage control and for the sake of future projects they are doing this. On some level, it’s at least good to see they are doing this but I do wonder why they didn’t before.
Also, Fujitsu being open about the issues forces the Civil Service and the government to be open as well. Clearly Fujitsu are to blame but so are those other two.
They’ve been lying about it for over 25 years. This is because the evidence against them is now overwhelming and the only option left is to admit it.
