Britain’s Post Office scandal is a typical IT disaster

Paul Patterson MPITwas repentant. Fujitsu was “truly sorry”, the head of its European business told s on January 16th, for its role in Horizon, a faulty payments system that resulted in the false conviction of over 900 between 1999 and 2015. Why did the Japanese firm do nothing about bugs it knew bedevilled its software, even as tales of injustice, destitution and worse mounted? “I don’t know. I wish I knew but I just don’t know.”Mr Patterson is the first Fujitsu executive to be questioned publicly about the scandal; others will be probed more forensically at a separate public inquiry. Yet already the evidence points to classic problems with the way public bodies contract firms to build and manage large systems—as well as to the risks of believing that computers are always right.