The Post Office has paid Fujitsu an amount exceeding £95 million to prolong the troubled Horizon IT system for an additional two years. This extension comes after a failed attempt to

transition to Amazon, forcing the Post Office to abandon the plan. Despite the substantial investment, a serving postmaster revealed to the BBC that the software remains unreliable, leading to financial discrepancies.

The Horizon project, initiated nearly 28 years ago by Fujitsu to automate and simplify operations in over 17,000 Post Office branches across the UK, has been plagued by persistent issues and delays. The system, which has led to what is considered one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in British history, held thousands of sub-postmasters accountable for losses not attributed to their actions, resulting in 983 criminal convictions.

While the Post Office plans to trial a new system in branches later this year, Horizon is still in use and reportedly continues to exhibit reliability concerns. A South East England postmaster, requesting anonymity, stated that the system remains untrustworthy and unreliable, with ongoing issues of shortfalls.

Despite these challenges, the Post Office has made changes in its approach to working with postmasters, particularly after the sub-postmasters' legal victory in 2019. The organization now tends to resolve significant disputes in favor of the sub-postmasters.

In December 2022, the Post Office abandoned a plan to migrate Horizon to Amazon's cloud network, citing technical challenges and high costs associated with the complexity and age of the Horizon system. The decision resulted in an additional cost of £31 million, according to the Post Office's latest accounts.

The Horizon contract, initially set to expire in 2023, has now been extended twice, incurring costs of £42.5 million in 2021 and two contracts totaling £53.1 million in the past year. This extends the contract until April 1, 2025, with a cumulative expenditure of £95.6 million.

The Post Office is actively working on a replacement for Horizon, referred to as "New Branch IT." While installations were initially planned for the previous year, the project has faced delays. The organization is currently testing basic mail transactions on the new system in pilot branches, with further functionalities expected to be added and evaluated for implementation later in 2024.

Additionally, the Post Office awarded Accenture a £27 million contract in 2022 to assist with transitioning its IT systems to the cloud, along with a separate contract for developing the user interface for the new system. The Post Office's accounts indicate a £115 million impairment of capitalized software costs, although specific details about this loss remain undisclosed. Photo by Chris Shaw / Bowness Avenue Post Office / CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia commons.