Not necessarily. How and when 'bugs' manifest themselves is down to the level of the initial testing and then after deployment, the users reporting back - but, if it was known, then the fault reporting system used should have shown the hows,wheres and whens.. Not trying to pass the buck, but I would have thought that the audit should have highlighted the discrepancies. I'd assume that one of the big accounting companies would have been involved in vetting the system.
It would be interesting to see how many prosecutions for fraud occurred before the system was installed and what the numbers were after - as I find it hard to believe that no one spotted a massive hike in alleged fraudulent postmasters.
Who should have picked up the problems? Errors as severe as these should have been picked up at the testing phase. No financial system should go live without being thoroughly 'failure tested'. That is to say tested to ensure it won't do what it not supposed to do, not just tested to see that it will do what is required.
An analogy could be testing that an aircraft undercarriage retracts properly but not testing that it comes back down. The end result is quickly apparent in use!
I would agree that it 'should' have been picked up in the initial testing and then again when it was user tested but without knowing exactly what the issue was, that's just wishful thinking and how it 'should' be.. All bugs should be picked up, but they aren't are they? How many systems have been worked on and a bug appears months or years after live date where it's looked at it and the developers wonder how the bloody hell it managed to slip through the net for all that time? I would guess that it was intermittent - as not all postmasters were accused. What circumstances caused £n,000 to go missing and presumably look like the books balance (ie the money had been received and not paid out) - so looked like theft?
I still find it all odd - as on one hand you have a system saying £x has gone missing (and from what I gather these were not small numbers), and on the other, none of the investigations could have found that money anywhere near the postmaster's personal accounts or changes in their lifestyles. Surely somebody would have thought '£n,000 has gone - where's the paper trail? - how did the postmaster spend it?'. And when in x alleged cases of postmaster fraud they never found any trace of the money with the postmasters - then the team doing the prosecutions would also have rang alarm bells.
Not to mention the computer programmers. They must have known that there were problems with the system, surely?
I used to work as a computer programmer, and I am sure that the software was tested before it went into use. However, it is very easy for bugs to be missed and to only show up when the programme goes into use. I remember one story of a bank that decided to write to its richest customers to offer them a new service. A programmer wrote a programme to identify the richest customers, and in order to test it he created an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard. Unfortunately, when the programme was run for real the rich customers were all sent a letter which began "Dear Rich Bastard..."!
I remember one story of a bank that decided to write to its richest customers to offer them a new service. A programmer wrote a programme to identify the richest customers, and in order to test it he created an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard. Unfortunately, when the programme was run for real the rich customers were all sent a letter which began "Dear Rich Bastard..."!
The Post Office thing was truly dreadful - so many lives ruined and the findings too late for some. However, I couldn't help laughing about the "Dear Rich Bastard...." letter going live Fortunately ( or unfortunately ? ) I've never been in the position to receive such a letter but thank you to @Alan Clark2 in Liverpool for making my day
Changing track on here. Hubby got phone call from surgery he was very overdue for basic checks. Up till last summer he was working 40 miles away so couldn't "pop" home to the nurse. They were happy to let me do the BP same with mine ( just have) and ring with numbers. His was high,rang appointment with nurse 6 weeks ago,made him ( try) to loose weight,give up caffeine,sodium, excercise a lot more, second appointment today, said he would need to "see" the Dr,but guess what there isn't a SINGLE DR working, phone appointments only. I actually be need a DR to "see" something,at some point
I've got a gripe today. Well, actually I've got two!
1) Went for a lovely swim, lunch time session so only 2/3s full (compared to the session I have booked for Friday which is sold out so will be a fair bit busier). I'm not the fastest swimmer and being a 5ft 5 girl puts me at a disadvantage against the 6ft 4 blokes but being a long distance runner and having some decent swimming skill I know I'm definitely not appropriate for the slow lane and realistically I outstrip almost everyone in the medium lane most times I go. Generally I settle for the fast lane unless it's completely full. Today was no exception; initially just me and two guys in the fast lane to begin with, all of us passing the medium lane just fine. Good. Then a couple more guys get in and we fall into a nice rotation pattern, everyone taking their turn and no-one overtaking or getting stuck behind anyone too slow.
Then an older lady (not trying to discriminate, just to furnish you with the scene!) gets in, swims a couple of lengths in the medium lane. I noticed her straight away because she swam completely with her arms - no leg kick at all. Just front crawl arms all the way down. She's pretty quick and keeping up with the rest of the medium lane doing it but I guess at some point she decided that it was too crowded in the medium lane and that the fast lane looked better so she swam into the fast lane and disrupted the whole group of us. Just front crawl arms... no leg kick... all the flipping way down the lane! Why!? If you're injured then fine, fair enough, that's not my business but there's no need to move into the quicker lane where everyone else is doing their best to keep up the pace.
AND THEN another lady moves into the fast lane, again an older lady, who does four single lazy efforts of backstroke up and down the lane holding us all up again (for those of us who got past the first lady). Then they stood at the top of the lane and had a natter for ten minutes taking up most of the turning wall! Why would you stand at top of the fast lane where everyone in that lane is swimming to a good pace and talk about how your shoulder hurts a bit and what you bought in Sainsburies last week? Drives me crazy. Either get out and go for a walk around the park next to the swimming pool to chat or swim next to each other and chat in the slow lane (which had about 2 people in it). I find it so bloody rude. I wouldn't go to a running track session and then stand in lane 1 and chat to my mate whilst everyone around me was doing a sprint workout.
2) On the way back from the pool I popped into our local Webbs to get some compost as we're all out; they have spring bulbs on half price so I went a bit crazy with the dahlias Spent a good ten minutes making sure I picked bulbs with eyes on, a couple of a bit here nor there as to whether the eye is substantial enough but those were the cheaper ones that came in at £1.50 so I figured it was worth a shot, for less than the price of a coffee... My moan is that I had to spend so long looking through them and SO many didn't have any signs of life at all. I've picked up one pack of 3 extra large dinner plate ones (I have no idea if that's a real thing or if that's a marketing gimmick) and one has a decent eye on it, the other has nothing. Because they were half price the guy at the till wouldn't do anything about it and looked at me like I was an alien when I pointed out that only one of them would grow.
I would agree that it 'should' have been picked up in the initial testing and then again when it was user tested but without knowing exactly what the issue was, that's just wishful thinking and how it 'should' be.. All bugs should be picked up, but they aren't are they? How many systems have been worked on and a bug appears months or years after live date where it's looked at it and the developers wonder how the bloody hell it managed to slip through the net for all that time? I would guess that it was intermittent - as not all postmasters were accused. What circumstances caused £n,000 to go missing and presumably look like the books balance (ie the money had been received and not paid out) - so looked like theft?
I still find it all odd - as on one hand you have a system saying £x has gone missing (and from what I gather these were not small numbers), and on the other, none of the investigations could have found that money anywhere near the postmaster's personal accounts or changes in their lifestyles. Surely somebody would have thought '£n,000 has gone - where's the paper trail? - how did the postmaster spend it?'. And when in x alleged cases of postmaster fraud they never found any trace of the money with the postmasters - then the team doing the prosecutions would also have rang alarm bells.
On the news yesterday evening they were speaking to one of the women who has just had their conviction quashed. At the time she was not aware that many other people were in the same position as her, but Post Office bossed must have been aware that there was apparently a sudden upsurge in criminal behaviour by their postmasters. Did nobody question why, andwhether information was correct.
Regarding testing, yes bugs can and do slip through and sometimes only become apparent when a system is used 'in anger', but the impression is that senior managers would not countenance the possibility that there could be a problem with the new system.
Edited to add:- I've just read that the woman who was the head of the PO actually sacked the auditors who suggested that the problem could lie with the software. She earned £4.5 million as head of PO!
I know that some people derive great pleasure from swimming pools but somehow the idea of putting my mouth into water that contains other people’s skin scurf, hair and sebaceous secretions just makes me squirm.
I had to design the water treatment system for a swimming pool once, and read 'The Pool Water guide' in order to understand the requirements. It lists, in graphic detail, all the, er, stuff that ends up in swimming pool water that the treatment system has to deal with. I will never get in a swimming pool ever again.
And public jacuzzis? **shudder** Run away!
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Posts
BBC Radio 4 happen to be broadcasting a series of ten 15 minute programmes about this story, details here:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j
However, I couldn't help laughing about the "Dear Rich Bastard...." letter going live Fortunately ( or unfortunately ? ) I've never been in the position to receive such a letter but thank you to @Alan Clark2 in Liverpool for making my day
1) Went for a lovely swim, lunch time session so only 2/3s full (compared to the session I have booked for Friday which is sold out so will be a fair bit busier). I'm not the fastest swimmer and being a 5ft 5 girl puts me at a disadvantage against the 6ft 4 blokes but being a long distance runner and having some decent swimming skill I know I'm definitely not appropriate for the slow lane and realistically I outstrip almost everyone in the medium lane most times I go. Generally I settle for the fast lane unless it's completely full. Today was no exception; initially just me and two guys in the fast lane to begin with, all of us passing the medium lane just fine. Good. Then a couple more guys get in and we fall into a nice rotation pattern, everyone taking their turn and no-one overtaking or getting stuck behind anyone too slow.
Then an older lady (not trying to discriminate, just to furnish you with the scene!) gets in, swims a couple of lengths in the medium lane. I noticed her straight away because she swam completely with her arms - no leg kick at all. Just front crawl arms all the way down. She's pretty quick and keeping up with the rest of the medium lane doing it but I guess at some point she decided that it was too crowded in the medium lane and that the fast lane looked better so she swam into the fast lane and disrupted the whole group of us. Just front crawl arms... no leg kick... all the flipping way down the lane! Why!? If you're injured then fine, fair enough, that's not my business but there's no need to move into the quicker lane where everyone else is doing their best to keep up the pace.
AND THEN another lady moves into the fast lane, again an older lady, who does four single lazy efforts of backstroke up and down the lane holding us all up again (for those of us who got past the first lady). Then they stood at the top of the lane and had a natter for ten minutes taking up most of the turning wall! Why would you stand at top of the fast lane where everyone in that lane is swimming to a good pace and talk about how your shoulder hurts a bit and what you bought in Sainsburies last week? Drives me crazy. Either get out and go for a walk around the park next to the swimming pool to chat or swim next to each other and chat in the slow lane (which had about 2 people in it). I find it so bloody rude. I wouldn't go to a running track session and then stand in lane 1 and chat to my mate whilst everyone around me was doing a sprint workout.
2) On the way back from the pool I popped into our local Webbs to get some compost as we're all out; they have spring bulbs on half price so I went a bit crazy with the dahlias
Annnnd. Breathe. XD
I always think I can rescue half price plants. I don't have great success...
And public jacuzzis? **shudder** Run away!
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”