$US2 Million Taxpayers Money Has Gone Into The Black Hole That Is Washington’s Seed To Sale System

According to documents obtained via a public records request, the LCB paid MJ Freeway $1,971,421 between May 2017 and August 2019 for its work on Leaf Data Systems.. To be honest we’re surprised the sum isn’t twice as big considering the dramas over the years. Amazingly Washington state still deals with Akerna ( formally MJ Freeway), why they do is beyond us . It’s worth noting that Akerna seemed to keep getting hired by other states to do the same job .

Ganjapreneur reports and well done them for digging up this information.

As we used to say. It’s a travesty and a farce.”

Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board has paid nearly $2 million for Leaf Data Systems, the seed-to-sale tracking system that has consistently frustrated the state’s cannabis industry.

According to new documents obtained by Ganjaprenuer, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board has issued nearly $2,000,000 in payments over a two-year period to MJ Freeway for Leaf Data Systems, the state’s problem-plagued seed-to-sale traceability database.

MJ Freeway was chosen in summer 2017 as Washington’s contractor to build the state’s traceability database after competitor Franwell hastily withdrew from the contract negotiations.

The company, however, missed its first deadline of Halloween 2017 then changed the launch date for Leaf Data Systems to February 1, 2018. Numerous other challenges have followed, including a data breach in 2018 and a complete timeline rework in spring 2019. By the fall, it was clear the project was still having problems after an LDS shutdown in July. Shortly thereafter, the LCB announced that MJ Freeway would “maintain” the database only, scrapping the new timeline and putting on hold all future updates.

According to documents obtained via a public records request, the LCB paid MJ Freeway $1,971,421 between May 2017 and August 2019 for its work on Leaf Data Systems.

In 2019, MJ Freeway completed a merger with MTech Acquisition Corp. to form a new company, Akerna Corp., which adopted the LDS system.

In an email, LCB spokesperson Julie Graham said the LCB paid the contractor an additional $52,500 in September for “project deliverables,” but the two parties have also agreed on a $265,000 credit to the LCB for “outstanding invoices that LCB has been holding pending resolution of the contract discussions.” At the moment, it is unclear how much longer the LCB will continue to pay its $50,000 monthly subscription fee to MJ Freeway.  

Read the full Ganjapreneur report at

Washington’s Broken Seed-to-Sale System Has Cost $2M

 

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