Framed by Perfect Software: The Post Office Scandal & Lessons for Testers

Get the 3rd July in your diaries as we are super excited to announce that we have James Christie coming all the way down from Scotland to share his insights on the Horizon Post Office Scandal with us.

We have the awesome folks over at Socially Responsible Recruitment (SR2) sponsoring the venue and providing those all-important Pizzas and drinks 🍕 Spaces are limited so please sign up early to avoid disappointment.

Most of us will be familiar with the Horizon Post Office scandal which involved the wrongful prosecution of over 700 UK postal workers from 2000 to 2014, who were falsely accused of theft, fraud, and false accounting due to errors in the Horizon computer system. The scandal led to convictions, job losses, and severe personal impacts, with many convictions later overturned after it was revealed that the system was flawed and unreliable, A system that The Post Office and Fujitsu had claimed was as good as perfect!

In his talk, James will explain serious flaws in the development and testing process of the original system, and the failure of both corporations to manage the system responsibly. And, during this talk, he will discuss the crucial lessons that Testers can learn from it.

About the speaker: James Christie’s IT experience goes back 40 years. He has worked as a system developer, designer and team leader, business analyst, IT auditor, project manager, test manager and consultant, and information security manager. This has been mostly in financial services and much of it on large scale IT outsourcing contracts.

Over the last four years he has been heavily involved in pro bono work linked to the Post Office scandal. He has written legal articles, campaigned for a change in the law, and briefed politicians and lawyers. His range of experience has proved valuable in understanding what happened and we can't wait to hear what he has to say.

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Our meetups are open to absolutely anyone with an interest in Software Testing, whether you are just getting started, a seasoned QA, or a Developer keen to learn more. Many people come on their own and we make sure the evening is as friendly and welcoming as possible 💚
Here’s how the evening tends to run,

Feel free to turn up from 6pm. We'll have a selection of pizza and soft drinks available, all free of charge thanks to SR2 💛 Grab a slice, mingle with our friendly crowd, and make some new connections. If you need an introduction, just grab our organiser Sam, or dive right in and say "hello!"

Around 6:30 we will then move on to our talk which will be followed by a Q&A session

As a friendly reminder, our speakers give up their time to talk to us for free. We expect all attendees to abide by our code of conduct and to treat each other and our speakers with kindness and respect 🥰

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If you want to join us over on Slack for between meetup chat you can join with this link : https://tinyurl.com/SouthWestTestSlack
Feel free to reach out to our organiser Sam if you would like to get involved in hosting or speaking at a future meetup sam@sr2rec.co.uk