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Post Office Faces Prolonged Reliance on Faulty IT System After £600m in Extensions

Efforts to replace Fujitsu’s Horizon system falter as delays and rising costs plague in-house alternative, locking the Post Office into costly contracts until at least 2030.

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Overview

  • The Post Office has spent over £600 million since 2012 to extend its use of the flawed Horizon IT system, despite deciding over a decade ago that it needed replacement.
  • Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, was responsible for the wrongful prosecution of more than 900 sub-postmasters for theft, fraud, and false accounting.
  • Attempts to replace Horizon, including projects with IBM and Amazon cloud, were abandoned, with the latter failing as recently as 2022.
  • The Post Office's in-house replacement, the New Branch IT (NBIT) system, faces significant delays and ballooning costs that may exceed £1 billion, raising doubts about its rollout.
  • Warnings from 1999 about the risks of not owning Horizon’s core code proved prescient, leaving the Post Office unable to switch suppliers and bound to costly contracts through at least 2030.