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Good morning. The Post Office scandal is a human tragedy, but one that raises big questions about how we use technology in government. Some more thoughts on that below.
Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.com
Signal failure
The reason why computers are — or at least, are to me — an exciting tool in public policy is that we a) know that computers make mistakes and b) it is possible to understand, eventually, why a computer has made a mistake.
Now, that second part is becoming less true as computers become more complicated. I’ve previously written about this and about types of “black box algorithms” (those in which the inputs and processes are hidden from public view). But even then, computers can be preferable to “human-only” decision-making, because, in theory at least, not only can an artificial brain make calculations at greater speed and of greater complexity than a human one, no one’s pride is at stake. Faulty software is just part of life.
The Post Office scandal matters for many reasons — not least the thousands of victims. It also holds lessons for governments in the future. The Horizon system made mistakes, but it did not seem to occur to the Post Office leadership that they should be alert to that possibility. Then, instead of admitting the mistake they fought it in court all the way until 2019.
As the FT reveals in today’s paper, poor performance involving other government software led to a Cabinet Office effort to exclude Fujitsu from receiving further government contracts from 2010 to 2015. This push was ultimately unsuccessful. Even after the High Court ruled in 2019 that faults in its Horizon software might have led to the conviction of more than 900 sub-postmasters, the IT giant continued to receive government work.
As Camilla Cavendish details in her column, that is part of a broader problem in UK politics that goes beyond technology, but, as John Thornhill sets out in his, there are specific lessons for this particular policy field. The big policy challenge of the Post Office scandal for both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer is to set out what they think the lessons of it are for them, not just for the Post Office and Fujitsu.
Now try this
Caroline Shaw, one of my favourite living composers, was BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week last week, and a delightful guest she was too.
I hadn’t realised that she was the composer on the mini-series Fleishman is in Trouble, the Hulu adaptation of the novel of the same name. I found the novel compelling but infuriating: I read it almost in a single sitting but I came very close on multiple occasions to throwing it across the room and I was deeply frustrated that it didn’t end with Toby Fleishman being beaten to death with an iron bar.
But the adaptation — also written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the author of the book — succeeded in making me feel like there was more going on. Although the adaptation is, as you’d expect very loyal, the casting and direction meant that my own unfavourable interpretation of what Toby did and said was less front-and-centre. It’s worth checking out on Disney+ if you’re in the mood for a mini-series about a divorce. (That said, my colleague and near-office neighbour Emma Jacobs disagreed, telling me on Bluesky that she still thought not seeing your kids would be a small price to pay for not seeing Toby Fleishman.)
