Rumors About the U.S. Mint Ecommerce Outage

As most people are aware, the U.S. Mint Web site's Ecommerce section was down for a little more than a week recently. Mint Director Ed Moy issued an apology, which struck me as being sincere, but there were still a few loose ends to wrap up before letting this matter take its place in "old news." In particular, people wanted to know how it was possible that a major entity like the U.S. Mint could lose its Ecommerce functionality for so long a period of time. There was speculation that a Mint Web services subcontractor had withheld the computer code and/or order data from the Mint in retaliation for being fired by the Mint. Another rumor claimed that the whole outage was a manipulation on the Mint's part to justify some price increases. Some rumors I heard were very bizarre conspiracy-theory type explanations that are so absurd as to not be worth repeating.

I contacted U.S. Mint Deputy Director of Public Affairs, Greg Hernandez, determined to get the truth behind all of this. Hernandez promised to send me a statement by the end of the day that addressed these rumors. Here is the statement he sent:

This was indeed a lapse in service to our customers and the United States Mint apologizes. United States Mint officials had planned to come to an acceptable agreement on a new contract with the online provider of the United States Mint catalog. However, negotiations went down to the wire. We did not expect an interruption of service, but after exhausting all means to reach an agreement, the United States Mint made the decision to move to another provider. Time was needed to make sure the online ordering system was secure and reliable.

To be honest, I would like to have seen the rumors addressed a little more specifically in this official written statement, but the more I'm learning about the "corporate culture" around the Mint and the U.S. Treasury Department in general, the more I am beginning to understand this apparent paranoia about putting things in writing. Not that I agree that these choices are the best they could be making from a modern public relations standpoint, but we are dealing with the government, after all.

In my most recent telephone conversation with Hernandez, (the one in which he promised to send the statement above,) Hernandez did verbally clarify a couple of points that didn't make the written statement. He said the outage was not the result of disgruntled ex-contractors withholding computer code or order data. He reiterated that the primary reason for the outage was that the Mint felt that if they couldn't offer a 100% secure and reliable online ordering system, they'd rather not offer it at all. There are no mysteries, no conspiracies, just a contract that they expected to get renewed that didn't happen. End of story.

I've met Greg Hernandez, and I like the man. He seems very sincere, and shares Ed Moy's vision of a U.S. Mint that is more responsive and which communicates better with the collecting community. He's not a career bureaucrat, having joined the Mint after working in the private sector as a journalist for many years. I trust him, and I think he's telling us the truth about all this Ecommerce outage stuff, so as far as I'm concerned, my inquiry is closed and this should be my last post about the matter.

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