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Post Office Faces £600m Cost to Extend Flawed Horizon IT System

Decades after deciding to replace it, the Post Office remains reliant on Horizon, with its replacement delayed and costs escalating beyond £1 billion.

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Overview

  • The Post Office has spent over £600 million since 2012 on extensions to the faulty Horizon IT system, which was meant to be replaced more than a decade ago.
  • Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, was responsible for wrongful convictions of over 900 sub-postmasters between 1990 and 2015 due to software errors.
  • The original 1999 contract with Fujitsu denied the Post Office ownership of the system's core code, hindering its ability to switch suppliers or inspect transaction processes.
  • Attempts to replace Horizon failed, including a £40 million IBM project in 2016 and an Amazon-cloud solution abandoned in 2022.
  • The Post Office’s in-house replacement system, NBIT, is delayed and could cost over £1 billion, leaving the organization reliant on Fujitsu until at least 2030.