Having sunk over £31 million on a failed cloud migration and at least £60 million in recent contract extensions for support of its legacy Horizon software system, the Post Office is still “in the process of developing plans for its technology platforms, including that of the Horizon system” it said.
The extraordinary admission came in its most recent annual report [pdf], published December 19. (Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 post office branch managers were prosecuted after buggy Horizon software delivered by first ICL and then Fujitsu flagged false accounting shortfalls. Hundreds were jailed or left bankrupted. At least four killed themselves.)
Delivering a Horizon replacement is “a significant undertaking and will take a number of years to fully develop and roll out [given] the scale of the Network across which technology needs to be deployed… activity of this nature would usually be funded via the traditional investment funding provided by the Government,” the annual report said.
“Given the scale of the activity… additional exceptional funding is required” the Post Office added – saying that “as plans continue to develop, discussions regarding funding from Government for these activities also continue, with the expectation… that the Government will provide the necessary funding to enable these activities to be undertaken… noting this funding is not contractually committed.”
See also: Unwiring Whitehall? Why HMG is facing a CIO exodus
Plans to build or buy new a replacement under its “New Branch IT” (NBIT) project remain stalled meanwhile with the Post Office (which received a further £40 million in government funding in 2024 to “support the transformation of IT infrastructure, specifically the Horizon replacement programme”) expected to make a decision on how it proceeds by April.
(The Stack understands that the government/Post Office is seeking to ensure that a new, experienced Chief Information Officer is in place to lead this next modernisation attempt before it commits to that funding. It hired Andy Nice from Camelot as Chief Transformation Officer in August 2024 to lead an overhaul of how these efforts are delivered.)
As recently as 2021, Post Office IT staff were blogging about fixing system errors and producing “981 test scripts” to understand user journeys and "make improvements based on actual day to day issues Postmasters face when using Horizon." After The Stack noted this in earlier reporting, the Post Office deleted a series of blogs it had hosted by a former IT director.
More recently, the Post Office said separately in a contract notice this week that it is looking for help maintaining its “Common Digital Platform” or CDP, which hosts around 50 digital services on AWS.)
These include “internal and customer facing purposes, including PUDO, Drop and Go and Branch Finder” the government-owned company said.
It’s contracting for support under an initial three-year term (starting August 2025) with the potential for two 12-month extensions.