MassDOT Developers Must Be Stopped

By Steve Poftak
January 15th, 2010

Dear Secretary Mullan,

Last year, I criticized manual toll collection, saying “Few other government services are executed with the deliberate inefficiency and expense of manual tolling.”. But I have a confession – its practices like this that make my job necessary.

That’s why I’m so concerned about the MassDOT Developers project.
What could be a standard issue example of overly long and complex government procurement, with expensive consultants, millions of dollars of custom code, and little interest in actual customers, is becoming something very different.

Although in a pilot phase, they’ve shown the ability to bring products to market quickly, leverage outside skillsets the state could never hope to hire, and do it at minimal cost. Most importantly, the results are being driven by what customers want. (Examples here, here, and here.)

I have mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay. This type of efficiency is not helpful to me. Would it be possible to let this initiative peter out? Maybe starve it of additional data or transfer some staff to another area? Happy to work with you on slow bureaucratic ways to let this initiative slowly dissolve.

Yours Truly,

Steve