{"id":66505,"date":"2018-04-06T07:38:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T12:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=66505"},"modified":"2018-04-06T07:38:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T12:38:22","slug":"the-scapegoat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=66505","title":{"rendered":"The Scapegoat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The media has found someone to blame for the Minnesota motor vehicle licensing computer system (MNLARS), just in the nick of time:<\/p>\n

An outside investigator hired by the state’s information technology department found the official in charge of Minnesota’s troubled vehicle licensing system knew there were numerous defects prior to its launch last summer but failed to address them.<\/p>\n

The report says Paul Meekin, who was officially\u00a0fired from his job at Minnesota IT Services<\/a>\u00a0last month, fell short of expectations related to pre-launch testing and several key management responsibilities, including communication and staffing.<\/p>\n

The $93 million Minnesota Licensing and Registration System (MNLARS) was rolled out on July 24, 2017, replacing a 30-year-old system. There were immediate problems, including delays in the processing of license and title transactions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just in time for the elections!<\/p>\n

It’s complete baked wind, of course.\u00a0 While Meekin may or may not have been a terrible program manager, it’s common knowledge among Twin Cities IT people that Minnesota’s government IT bureaucracy is systemically sclerotic, and largely incapable of delivering software effectively and efficiently.<\/p>\n

But it’s government work.\u00a0 As long as there’s a politically-acceptable scapegoat, nothing will change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media has found someone to blame for the Minnesota motor vehicle licensing computer system (MNLARS), just in the nick of time: An outside investigator hired by the state’s information technology department found the official in charge of Minnesota’s troubled vehicle licensing system knew there were numerous defects prior to its launch last summer but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66506,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66505\/revisions\/66506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}