{"id":203,"date":"2009-01-07T22:05:27","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T03:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/07\/software-disasters-in-the-news-dear-john-doe\/"},"modified":"2009-01-07T22:05:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T03:05:29","slug":"software-disasters-in-the-news-dear-john-doe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/07\/software-disasters-in-the-news-dear-john-doe\/","title":{"rendered":"Software Disasters In The News: Dear John Doe"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the LA Times Reports<\/a>, About 7,000 letters sent to families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan had the salutation ‘Dear John Doe.’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, the situation appears have done less harm than it sounds like it would.<\/p>\n

\nJ. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the service had not received any angry complaints, but several families called to alert the military to the error. …<\/p>\n

Bonnie Brown of Troy, Ala., whose son John E. Brown was killed in Iraq on April 14, 2003, said she received a copy of the letter this week. She said she found the salutation odd but not offensive.<\/p>\n

“I did notice it said, ‘Dear John Doe,’ ” she said. “But it didn’t really bother me. I didn’t think too much about it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the public relations fallout is immense, and all the more heated because of the political volatility surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was still a disaster.<\/p>\n

Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, was less forgiving, arguing the Army needed to do more to support military families…. (and) take extra care when communicating with the families of fallen troops.<\/p>\n

“How much does it take to proofread letters?” Rieckhoff asked. “You have to remember the amount of hurt the families are going through.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s a very legitimate question. I don’t understand enough about how mass-mailing operations work, or the technical cause of the error, to be able to answer it. (Remember, the letters were correctly addressed.)<\/p>\n

I look forward to learning more about this unfortunate glitch, understanding what caused it, and (hopefully) how to avoid the underlying class of mistake.<\/p>\n

The Army declined to release the name of the California company that printed the letters, insisting the responsibility for preventing the error was the military’s alone…Military officials did not immediately respond to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the name of the company.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long for that FOI query. The smart thing for the as-yet-unnamed company to do would be to come clean on their own, honestly explain the problem, and convincingly demonstrate that they have learned from their mistakes and won’t let something like that happen again. Given that an FOI request has already been made, they shouldn’t expect to remain anonymous and brush this disaster under the rug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the LA Times Reports, About 7,000 letters sent to families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan had the salutation ‘Dear John Doe.’ Fortunately, the situation appears have done less harm than it sounds like it would. J. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the service had not received any angry complaints, but several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[294,290,291,292,293],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","tag-mass-mailings","tag-military","tag-politics","tag-public-relations","tag-software-disasters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}