DataGate Winners and Losers

Taking a look back on what we know about the scandal known as DataGate, there are some clear winners and losers.

WINNERS:

Mary Taylor - E Pluribus Media writes:

Ohio's new Republican Auditor Mary Taylor, the first CPA to hold the post, will gain tremendous political lift due to the report's conclusion that the theft would "never have compromised the identities of hundreds of thousands of stat employees, taxpayers, public assistance recipients and others" had OAKS administrators "responded appropriately to a call they received from an assistant state auditor in late February 2007" warning them that access to Social Security numbers and other sensitive data was "readily available on a shared drive on the OAKS intranet."
...
White and others, the reports says, initially heeded the warning from the auditor's office. But in what remains a mystery and what will become a legal tug-of-war over who ultimately will bear responsibility for the massive loss of data, the report says White's order to remove sensitive data and place it in a "more secure" location "were never relayed to the database analysts who were working with the data."

Gov. Ted Strickland - The governor reacted to the situation late and under-informed, but the 527 media in this state love him and would never criticize his poor crisis management skills no matter how bad the situation.

Marc Dann, Jennifer Brunner, Mike Coleman, Frankie Coleman, and Lee Fisher - DataGate got all of these characters off the front page...

Kevin DeWine - The only Ohio GOPer I ever remember hearing a quote from on the issue at all...

LOSERS:

The many Ohioans put at risk - About 800,000 Ohioans may yet still get ripped off and the protections offered by Gov. Strickland and his administration remain inadequate and unimpressive. So much so that even the administration itself isn't exactly encouraging potential victims to utilize the meager assistance that the Governor is offering.

The scapegoats - NBC4i reports:

According to authorities, Ohio Administrative Knowledge System (OAKS) project manager David White resigned. In addition, when intern Jared Ilovar refused the Office of Budget and Management's (OBM) request for resignation, he was discharged.

OBM also reportedly terminated the OAKS consulting contract for two Compuware employees, Avadhut Kulkarni and Brian Welch.

Even though the governor said time and again that he wouldn't scapegoat the kid who didn't have the sense to take the doo-dad with the sensitive information in to the house when he got home; the governor spared no time in dispatching the intern. Once again proving, that you can't trust what Gov. Strickland says in public...

The 527 Media and their Readers - Once again, the 527 media in this state failed to get at the story with the kind of tenacity they showed in their rigorous investigation of golf outings and bad investment schemes. And ultimately, it is the consumers of said media that really lose because they didn't get the whole story...again.