It's astonishing. No money ever went missing. It merely _seemed_ to have, and that was the entire foundation for what happened.
Fujitsu should take no blame at all. Their software is crap. But so is everyone's. That's software. We know and accept that in the industry.
> The inquiry will look at whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system
It did, because hundreds of users reported them. It chose to attack those users and bullheadedly believe that the system could not be wrong. Once their position was entrenched it became about "How dare mere mortals challenge technology?"
It led to a staggering spectacle of bullying (through relentless legal threats, stone-walling, harassment, and wrongful prosecution) that caused many of the victims to suffer severe health effects or contemplate suicide.
> our first priority is that full, fair and final compensation is provided
Rubbish. This is about more than compensation. There is no _final_ to this. It needs dragging out into the sunlight.
Sure, people lost their livelihoods, marriages, homes and years of their lives over this. Deep pockets might cover it. But if mere compensation is allowed to cover-up this episode a travesty will have occurred.
The issue is about fundamental changes we need to make around our relation to technology that allows grave errors made by weak-minded people to hide behind it. As we put ever more trust in digital forensics, telemetry, algorithmic policing, face-recognition, automated fraud detection and so on, more innocent people will have their lives ruined because we are falling into abject snivelling surrender before technology, far beyond anything Ellul, Mumford, Freud or Weber foresaw.
This speaks to a fundamental error in _how_ technology is being used.
> lessons are learned so that such events can never happen again
Sadly, they will happen again and again and again, I think.