The IG's Audit is a Real Hot Potato!

A friend and longtime contact in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) field sent me a copy of an email message entitled A Message from ITS America's President and CEO that was sent to ITS America's members. ITS America is the primary trade association that represents many private and public sector organizations, including traffic data and traveler information companies. Way back in 1992 I developed the initial operating plan for this association, which was then called "IVHS America."

The message, from Scott Belcher, ITSA's new President and CEO, was seemingly a routine update ("Week That Was - February 4, 2008") of recent news in the ITS field. The following news item was provided in the report's "Misc" section:

I also want to make you aware of one of the latest announcements from the U.S. Department of Transportation. An audit of the Transportation Technology Innovation Demonstration (TTID) Program was launched last week. The TTID was designed to help ease traffic congestion in U.S. cities by assisting in the deployment of a transportation surveillance infrastructure and providing traffic data from sensors to government transportation agencies. The sensor information is also provided to the public to aid travelers and commercial highway users.

According to SAFETEA-LU, the TTID program should: build and integrate an infrastructure of measurement; provide commercial initiatives to generate revenues for reinvestment in the intelligent transportation infrastructure; and aggregate data into reports for distribution. The objectives of this audit are to assess: (1) whether the TTID has met the statutory goals of building a traffic measurement infrastructure, providing commercial revenue generation initiatives, and aggregating and reporting surveillance data; and (2) whether the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has met the competitive procurement requirements in Part II, which were intended to expand the number of firms providing surveillance services. For a copy of the memorandum, visit http://www.oig.dot.gov/StreamFile?file=/data/pdfdocs/TTID.pdf.

My guess is that Mr. Belcher saw this news item in their Industry & Member News section and thought, rightfully so, that it was important industry news that impacted many of ITS America's member organizations. So -- not knowing the sordid history of this controversial program -- he routinely included it in his weekly news update to members.

Then all hell apparently broke out! It's clear that Mr. Belcher found out how explosive the OIG's announcement is in short order. Just three minutes later Sabrina Quirarte, ITS America's Director of Communications, sent out a follow-on missive to those same recipients with a subject of Recall: A Message from ITS America's President and CEO and the terse message "Sabrina Quirarte would like to recall the message, "A Message from ITS America's President and CEO".

Apparently some email systems actually let messages be "recalled" that the senders didn't realize would get them in big trouble. Ironically, this follow-on message likely just brought the OIG's announcement to the attention of a whole lot of folks who might not have otherwise paid any attention to it. Oops!

I asked my friend to see if the latest weekly eBriefing on ITSA's website (available only to members) contained the same OIG announcement that was in Mr. Belcher's message, and he said that it didn't. The publicly viewable Industry & Member News web page likewise has no mention of the OIG's announcement, even though it is undoubtedly big news to many ITSA members.

So it appears clear that the controversial nature of this announcement caused ITSA to almost immediately try to recall his otherwise routine update. It would be very interesting to know exactly what transpired in the scant three minutes between the original emailing and the recall. In any case, the whole episode was undoubtedly quite embarrassing to ITS America and made ITS America's President look pretty foolish.

Rightfully so. It's very unfortunate if a trade association that exists to serve its members deliberately keeps vitally important news from those members. After all, this announcement is important news to a bunch of ITS America's members -- including traveler information companies than are unable to access data because of Traffic.com's monopoly, consulting companies, and state/local transportation agencies that already participate in the TTID program (or, like Minneapolis and No. New Jersey/New York) are being recruited to participate by Traffic.com and/or the USDOT).

Thankfully, this announcement is getting out through many other routes, including:

1. Via my posting on the NTOC's Talking Operations Forum that I moderated for many years. (Just this morning this announcement was also emailed to all the Forum's subscribers, which likely number around 1,000.)

2. In the online version of Federal Computing Week.

3. In a blog posting by the Project on Government Oversight, entitled "Hon, I'll Be Late for Dinner."

4. In a news item on the industry blog Traffictechnologytoday.com, which is the online relative to the popular Traffic Technology International magazine.

5. In the Sunlight Foundation's posting ("Inspector General launches probe of Traffic.com contracts") on their "Real-Time Investigations" blog.

Hot potato or not, the word is getting around.

Jerry