Post Office scandal may have led to more than 13 suicides, inquiry finds
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Its an immense problem that it got so little attention until someone made a TV dramatisation of it. There are definitely many other miscarriages of justice caused by the assumption that systems are always correct, and these are not being corrected.
The lack of consequences for those responsible also means there is no deterrent to others doing similar things.
There's no evidence this scandal arose from software allowing any delegation of decisions.
The criminal prosecution will hopefully determine the extent to which the leadership did genuinely make that assumption.
Not even that. The leadership appeared to not care or care to understand what was going on. They showed a lack of competence and tried to cover it up, badly, when they realized they might be in deep shit. The software was just one part, and really just further wrapped up in leadership failure.
If you screw up as a Doctor or a Solicitor or an Accountant etc, you can get done for malpractice or struck off or go to prison.
Somebody will basically say, 'you did such a terrible job, you aren't allowed to do that job anymore'.
Screw up so badly writing software that 13 people commit suicide and sweet fa happens.
I'd like to hear what will be done about the judges responsible.
I’ve been in big company/gov tech for a long time. The companies building these types of projects are almost universally incompetent and often malevolent. Having had the occasion to “rescue” a few big projects, they are usually infused with a culture of incompetence and ambiguity in accountability for all things besides billing.
The problem is that it’s what I call “mutually assured incompetence”. The customer is bad at writing RFP/tenders, and often accepts substandard work out of ignorance. Contractors are disincentivized from delivering a sensible outcome as a result. Contractors only understand pain as a motivation once the deal is done. Garbage in, garbage out.
The failure of accountability is endemic as more and more tasks are automated and outsourced. Something as trivial as cash room accounting is a proven practice, traditionally with many eyes keeping all parties honest. While the personal tragedy isnt a factor, in the US, Bank of America “lost” tens of millions of dollars of physical cash in their outsourced counting facilities. The company’s response? Spend a fortune to physically shift cash around ahead of audits to pretend the money was there.