3.55 During this period the main risk facing the Department was that the software being developed by Pathway to handle payments for all benefits and in greater volumes might not be sufficiently secure or stable for a live trial. They initially sought to manage this by receiving and responding to regular progress reports from Post Office Counters Ltd.
3.56 When the Post Office took over from the Delivery Authority the lead in managing the contract as recommended by PA Consulting, the Department moved to an arms-length role and drew the management of their side of the Benefits Payment Card project into their expanded CAPS project. Post Office Counter's Horizon Project Manager reported fortnightly to the Department's CAPS Board and attended the Board monthly. The Department was never invited to attend the Post Office Project Board. Links continued at working level between the CAPS and Horizon Project Management Offices and at joint liaison meetings on implementation and technical issues. The Department actively sought, but did not obtain, an open, shared risk management process from the Post Office Horizon team, who maintained direct reporting arrangements between themselves and Pathway.
3.57 Later in 1998 the Department met Horizon and Pathway and discussed with them the extent of further testing of Pathway's system before the live trial. Lack of agreement on this point meant that the Department refused to authorise the start of the live trial, which had been planned for May 1999. Also at this point, further work still needed to be done on CAPS to test benefit systems "end-to-end". This remained the position when the Card project was cancelled.