We learned this week the a BIG state-wide program initiative is being delayed. It’s the state’s integrated IT system called STAR, advertised to put all the state agencies onto a common package of software that all talk to each other. It is supposed to make us work much more efficiently and save the state millions. It was scheduled to be partially deployed on July 1. Now they are telling us October … maybe.
A normal schlub like me would interpret this as, “The deployment had been delated by at least 3 months.” It was announced as, “The deployment is being extended by 3 months.” Silly me, I thought that extending something you get more of it, not less.
My all-time favorite spin doctor moment, however, was in Frank Luntz’s Fresh Air interview. At some point, Terry Gross asked him to respond to charges that his redefinition of words was Orwellian. His answer was, paraphrasing from memory, “Orwell was an excellent writer who used language very precisely, so when someone says that I use language in an Orwellian fashion, I take that as a compliment about the precision and accuracy of what I’m saying.”
Say what you will about the loathsomeness of his profession, it was kind of brilliant.
We decided to go in a different direction = somebody got fired
We have instituted a new tier program designed to be more efficient and address more customer concerns = your rates are going up
We’re proud to have served our community since (~100 years ago) = we’re desperate and are attempting to attract older customers who don’t know how to order online
To be fair, it may not be spin. Usually projects like that have a project timeline that includes a surprisingly long time to actually roll it out. Where I work, we’ve been working on getting field locations onto the new software for more than a year now, and that’s going according to plan.
So when they say "Deployment is extended, it may mean that instead of taking from February through August to roll out all the software, it will now take from February through November due to unforeseen needs to provision extra network equipment, or power or something like that. Not delayed at all; but actually extended; no spin involved.