A blistering report from the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has revealed that a multi-million dollar website development project by the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority was a catastrophic failure doomed by fundamental strategic errors and a complete lack of oversight. Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro’s nearly 60-page investigation concluded that the SSA has “nothing to show” for an expenditure estimated between $2 million and over $4 million, characterizing the entire effort as “ill-conceived, poorly executed, and a waste of public funds.” The project, which was in development for more than two years, was ultimately abandoned in September, leaving behind a cautionary tale of systemic mismanagement and failed governance. The report meticulously details a cascade of poor decisions that began at the project’s inception and continued unchecked until its costly demise, raising serious questions about the leadership and fiduciary responsibility of the state-chartered ferry service.
A Cascade of Systemic Failures
The investigation identified the project’s original sin as a “critical misstep” in its very conception: the decision to build a new, modern public-facing website without first addressing the antiquated and deeply problematic back-end reservation system upon which it would depend. The OIG report harshly criticized the SSA’s “failure to appreciate the difference” between these two interconnected systems, a foundational error that it stated “anchors the cascade of failures that ensued.” This oversight was not an unfortunate accident but a conscious disregard for prior warnings. The investigation found that General Manager Bob Davis had ignored specific recommendations from a 2018 operational review conducted by HMS, which had explicitly identified the aging reservation system as a major organizational risk. By choosing to pursue a cosmetic upgrade over essential infrastructure renewal, the leadership set the project on an inevitable path toward failure, ensuring that any new website would be built on a foundation of crumbling technology, unable to deliver the functionality or reliability customers required.
Beyond the flawed initial strategy, the OIG placed significant blame on a profound breakdown in both executive management and board governance. The report concluded that General Manager Bob Davis failed to appoint a project manager with the necessary skills or experience to oversee a complex technological redesign, a key leadership failure that left the multi-million dollar initiative without competent direction. Furthermore, Davis was found to have kept the SSA Board inadequately informed about “key decisions” as the project repeatedly missed deadlines and its budget spiraled out of control. The Board itself did not escape severe criticism. Legally charged with the authority’s overall management, the Board was found to have “exercised virtually no meaningful oversight” throughout the project’s lifecycle. Its members were faulted for not asking sufficient questions or challenging the “overly optimistic, unrealistic, or incomplete information” they received, ultimately failing in their core fiduciary duty to protect public funds.
Consensus of Concern and Leadership Controversy
The report’s devastating conclusions found a receptive audience among stakeholders who had long voiced similar concerns. There was a strong consensus among the OIG, the Martha’s Vineyard board representative, and a local citizens’ group that the project was fundamentally flawed from its inception. Jim Malkin, the board chair representing Martha’s Vineyard, confirmed that he and other Island Port Council members had “said from the beginning” that redesigning the website without first tackling the underlying IT infrastructure was “inappropriate.” This sentiment was echoed by the Steamship Authority Citizens’ Action Group, which expressed gratitude for the report’s “formal recognition of the longstanding and widespread mismanagement,” validating years of public outcry that had gone without meaningful response. In stark contrast to this unified front of criticism, the official statement from the Steamship Authority was procedural and non-committal, stating only that it was in receipt of the report and would be “thoroughly reviewing the extensive document” before commenting on specifics, a response that did little to quell public frustration.
A significant point of contention arising from the report is the SSA Board’s decision to retain Bob Davis in a senior advisory role for up to 18 months, despite the investigation finding he did not demonstrate a strong suit for “strategic planning, project management, and implementing large projects.” The OIG directly questioned this decision, issuing a stark warning that his continued presence could “impede the new general manager from setting his course for the SSA.” Board Chair Jim Malkin defended the move, emphasizing that Davis’s new role is purely advisory and is intended to leverage his “decades of institutional knowledge” on specific, board-directed projects. Malkin stressed that Davis would have no authority over day-to-day ferry operations, which will be the exclusive domain of the incoming General Manager, Alex Kryska. However, this distinction has not satisfied critics, who see the retention of an executive so central to the project’s failure as a sign that the authority has not fully embraced the need for a clean break from its past mistakes.
A Mandate for Foundational Reform
In the wake of its findings, the Office of the Inspector General outlined a clear mandate for reform that called for a thorough review of the Steamship Authority’s “project planning, execution, and oversight practices.” The report stressed that accountability had to begin at the highest levels, urging the Board to set a “tone from the top” that prioritized employee input and demonstrated a newfound respect for public funds. More profoundly, the OIG recommended a reevaluation of the ferry line’s enabling act to strengthen external oversight mechanisms, suggesting that the current governance structure was insufficient to prevent such catastrophic failures. The investigation served as a formal acknowledgment that the problems were not isolated to a single project but were indicative of deeper, systemic issues within the organization’s culture and procedures. These recommendations provided a detailed roadmap for the incoming leadership to follow in order to rebuild an organization that had lost significant public trust.
The arrival of a new general manager was positioned as a pivotal opportunity to enact these necessary changes, allowing the SSA to “examine its operating procedures, consider new approaches to project management, adopt best practices, and set a true tone from the top.” In a direct response to the disastrous project, the authority announced a definitive new course of action. It committed to launching a fully revamped website alongside a new reservation system the following fall, a move that finally addressed the core infrastructure issue that had been identified years earlier. This integrated approach represented the first tangible step toward rectifying the long-standing technological deficits and demonstrated a commitment to learning from the costly failures of the past. The plan was not merely a technical solution but a crucial part of a broader effort to restore credibility and ensure the responsible stewardship of public resources going forward.
