Software quality assurance, anyone?

By now, most of us are familiar with convictions being overturned and innocent people being released from prison. The stories are often quite dramatic, and the ones I've seen generally involve those who've been incarcerated for a good long time for violent crimes. They're sprung because the real perpetrator makes a deathbed confession; a key witness admits they lied; it turns out that the police and/or the DA's office fudged evidence (i.e., lied) to close a case or because in their gut they were sure someone was guilty and made the evidence fit their theory; or, increasingly, because DNA evidence proves their innocence. 

We see on the news a video of release day: the joyous family meeting their loved one at the prison gates. The newly freed person learning how to use a smart phone, an ATM, a keyless car. There's often some compensation for wrongful conviction - but never enough to make up for a decade, or two, or three, or four away from family and friends. Away from life.

There must be some instances, but I can't recall any convictions being overturned in a white collar/financial crime situation. 

But a big one has just taken place in the UK. 

For the past 20 years UK Post Office employees have been dealing with a piece of software called Horizon, which had a fatal flaw: bugs that made it look like employees stole tens of thousands of British pounds.

This led to some local postmasters being convicted of crimes, even being sent to prison, because the Post Office doggedly insisted the software could be trusted. After fighting for decades, 39 people are finally having their convictions overturned, after what is reportedly the largest miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever seen. (Source: The Verge)

In total, over the period between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 Post Office employees were prosecuted. Dozens went to prison. Many lost their jobs, their marriages, time with their kids, and money, as they scrabbled around, remortgaging their homes to repay the losses that were not their fault. One man accused of stealing £100,000 committed suicide. (And damned if his replacement wasn't also found to have had is hand in the till, too.)

All caused by bugs in the system, which the PO had purchased from Fujitsu.

Finally, those who were caught up in this nightmare are having their convictions over turned, having their good names restored, and being paid damages. 

It's amazing to me that, during this period when the Horizon system was playing "J'accuse!", no one bothered to take a good, close look at the software to see whether the reported discrepancies were actual. 

There's also something called "software quality assurance" that doesn't seem to have been used here. 

These days, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about software quality assurance, but years ago - make that decades - I worked for a software company which had an automated test tool as its main product. So I did have to spend a lot of time thinking, writing, and talking about software testing. Boring, but necessary.

So I can state with some authority - because some authorities just never expire - that Fujitsu should have done a better job testing their systems. And the UK Post Office should have done rigorous acceptance testing to begin with, and have torn this software apart looking for bugs once all these faux discrepancies began showing up. 

Anyway, rather than check on whether the software was working, the Post Office dug in, arguing that "the errors couldn’t have been be the fault of the computer system."

And get this: that was "despite knowing that wasn’t true."

There is evidence that the Post Office’s legal department was aware that the software could produce inaccurate results, even before some of the convictions were made.

Wow. I don't know how litigious the UK is, but can you imagine the law suits that would be flying in The States if this happened here? 

And we thought Louis DeJoy was bad news.