Dr Junade Ali warns IT scandals will become ever more common
Is your business vulnerable to a killer computer? As the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal at the UK Post Office reaches a crescendo this week, a new book warns that these technology failures are far more frequent than most people realise – and set to become even more common. Companies large and small are failing to deal effectively with such crises, it warns, often because they have a toxic culture.
The book, written by British software engineer and computer scientist Dr Junade Ali, makes a series of allegations about problems at other well-known organisations that mirror what happened at the Post Office. The common theme, Dr Ali argues, is that companies place far too much trust in the infallibility of their IT systems – and then choose to cover up problems when they do emerge, rather than admitting to failures and dealing with them.
“It’s a profound issue that needs to be addressed much more urgently,” says Dr Ali, whose book, How to Protect Yourself from Killer Computers, is published today. “Too often, we treat these failures as natural disasters, but the initial IT problem is made far worse by corporate wrongdoing and cover-ups.”
Dr Ali’s book is published as the UK continues to reel from revelations in the Post Office scandal, where hundreds of Post Office workers were wrongly convicted of fraud and theft offences following computer errors. For years, the Post Office insisted that its Horizon IT system could not be to blame, with many postmasters and postmistresses ending up serving time in prison. However, an investigation into the scandal has revealed that not only were many cases caused by IT problems but also that Post Office insiders knew this was possible. Alan Bates, a former postmaster who has been one of the leading campaigners for justice during this scandal, will begin giving evidence to the public inquiry tomorrow.
Dr Ali’s book includes new claims about the Post Office case, but also includes details of IT failures at organisations including the BBC, leading hospitals and a number of airlines. In many cases, Dr Ali suggests, the organisation’s response to the failure was to try to keep it a secret, often with disastrous results. “The lessons in this book are clear,” he says. “Human beings form a fundamental part of the integrity of computer systems when they seek to cover up or ignore problems, these scandals happen.”
Dr Ali points to research carried out by Engprax, the software auditing firm where he is currently CEO. In a recent survey, it found that 53% of software engineers had come across IT failures and bugs that they had reported to senior leaders in their organisations; 75% of these engineers said they had faced a hostile reaction and retaliatory behaviour in such cases, rather than seeing their warnings taken seriously and acted upon.
“The result is that a potentially catastrophic failure is not addressed, with the impacts getting worse and worse over time,” Dr Ali says. “Something that starts out as an innocent mistake or, at worst, an isolated case of negligence, rapidly snowballs into a truly disastrous scandal.”
For organisations to avoid this cascading effect, they must embrace a culture of openness, Dr Ali argues. Whistleblowers should be actively encouraged to raise problems and supported when they do so, rather than attacked.
“People in the software engineering industry know this is an issue but they can’t deal with it by themselves,” he warns. “Leadership from the very top of the organisation is essential – people need to feel safe when raising problems and that will only happen if organisations are open and honest when IT issues arise.”
It’s a timely warning for businesses and other organisations of all shapes and sizes. With dependence on technology growing – and increasing use of tools such as artificial intelligence, where the background processes are often poorly understood – the risk of an IT failure continues to escalate. Leaders that fail to deal with such failures transparently leave their organisations vulnerable to existential risk.