Fair point - and one that remains unresolved and which nobody really wants to talk about...

That's why - as we exclusively revealed last year - the final bill for replacing Horizon is likely to be about the same £1bn+ figure as the compensation bill.

Only when keeping Horizon became a bigger risk for Post Office than ditching it, did they decide they had to do so (8/8)

And even then, the £1bn+ compensation bill (paid by taxpayers of course, not by PO itself) was not enough to counter the risk of bringing Horizon in-house or of ditching it entirely... (7/8)

...the combined cost and risk of bringing Horizon in-house was prohibitive, at least it was until they were forced to accept liability for the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history... (6/8)

No company can simply switch off such mission-critical software and move to something else overnight.

For Post Office, it's always been a risk management issue... (5/8)

...it was simply that PO didn't have the skills or institutional capability and knowledge to bring the entire support operation in-house. Even today, Horizon IS the Post Office - without Horizon you can't run the business... (4/8)

Most likely, a copy of the software code would be stored in escrow to protect the buyer if the supplier went bust.

The reason Post Office couldn't get off Horizon was nothing to do with IP ownership... (3/8)

When the Horizon deal was signed in late 1990s it was common for companies to not own the IP of software developed in an outsourcing contract. It was a negotiating point- you could own the IP if you wanted to, but the supplier would charge you extra for it. Caveat emptor... (2/8)

My understanding is the digital identity team OK'd the offshore work, they just didn't tell anyone else...

According to claims by a whistleblower, many of the security problems that were reported have yet to be resolved (4/4)

Read the full story here:

www.computerweekly.com/news/3666225...

Problems were confirmed by an internal investigation led by GDS’s CISO. But when an MP wrote to the Cabinet Office to enquire about potential issues around the information security of One Login, GDS did not mention any of the warnings in its response (3/4)

The Government Digital Service was warned by Cabinet Office and National Cyber Security Centre that One Login had “serious data protection failings” and “significant shortcomings” in information security that could increase the risk of data breaches and identity theft (2/4)