The post office must decide on Horizon before April, Fujitsu’s board is considering a final contract extension

The Postal Service will decide whether to continue with internally built software to replace the controversial Horizon system or buy an off-the-shelf platform by April, the company’s transformation chief has said.

He added that a proposed four-year extension to the Post Office’s Horizon contract is currently awaiting approval with the Fujitsu board, with an extension needed “in any scenario”.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, Andy Nice, chief transformation officer at the Post Office, agreed that the decisions cannot “drag out”.

Nice, who joined the Post Office in late August, and his team put work on the troubled New Branch IT (NBIT) project on hold in early October following approval from the company’s board and the Department for Business and Trade.

“We’ve been looking at (in-house versus off-the-shelf) … for about six weeks and we want to start the new financial year (April 2025) very clearly on the direction of travel for technology at the Post Office as a whole,” said “I imagine there will be a decision by April – we’re certainly pushing for that, and I think the government expects that.”

He said the Post Office was now working with the government, which he added “hasn’t always been the way and hasn’t helped the Post Office as an organisation”.

Another major decision that has come under close scrutiny is the ongoing relationship with Fujitsu, the supplier of the software at the center of the postal service scandal, which is contractually due to end in March.

Earlier this week, Fujitsu boss Paul Patterson revealed at a public hearing into the Post Office Horizon scandal that the Post Office had requested a four-year contract extension on the day he gave evidence.

Nice confirmed that this was the case. “We have been in conversation with Fujitsu about the details of an extension for some time,” he told Computer Weekly. “In an NBIT world, or any world, we won’t be ready to back down and move away from Fujitsu any time soon. That’s the reality of our situation, and Paul Patterson knows that – we all do. There has to be an extension in any scenario.

“The reason different timeframes have been cited is because that conversation has bounced around over the last six months, with different options requiring different extensions,” Nice added.

He said he believes the Postal Service has an agreement and alignment on the appropriate time needed to deliver its plans: “Right now we’re in the finer details, and it’s the four years Paul Patterson cited in public investigation. deliver them. It has not been agreed upon (or) approved by Fujitsu’s board, but that is the conversation we are in.”

Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven sub-postmasters and the problems they suffered because of Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see the timeline below for Computer Weekly articles on the scandal since 2009).