Comment by amiga386

I haven't listened to the podcast, but I think you may be oversimplifying.

The origin of Horizon is that ICL won the tender for a project to computerise the UK's benefits payment system -- replacing giro books (like cheque books) with smart cards (like bank cards):

https://inews.co.uk/news/post-office-warned-fujitsu-horizon-...

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmtr...

Sure, it was also expected to detect fraud, but overall it was a "modernising" project. The project failed disastrously because ICL were completely incompetent at building an accounting system, the system regularly made huge mistakes, and the incoming government scrapped it.

ICL was nonetheless still very chummy with government, as it was concieved of by 1960s British politicians who basically wanted a UK version of IBM because they didn't want Americans being in control of all the UK's computer systems. ICL used to operate mainframes and supply "computer terminals" to government and such, which is why they needed a lot of equipment from Fujitsu, which is why Fujitsu decided to buy them.

ICL/Fujitsu still kept the contract to computerize Post Office accounting more generally -- Horizon. Post Offices could literally have pen-and-paper accounting until this! Yes, the project was also meant to look for fraud and shrinkage, but at its heart it was there to modernise, centralise and reduce costs. If only it wasn't written by incompetent morons who keep winning contracts because they're sweet with government.