Other ways to insure failure (Score 1)

A number of causes often lead to disaster: 1. The government procurement regulations are often more concerned with minority ownership and 'fairness' then they are with getting a competent contractor. As observed, the initial contractor that does the project specification is often not the contractor that gets to implement the project. 2. The government contracting officer often has no technical training is is essentially clueless in the subject matter being discussed. 3. The systems being replaced have often been in place for many years and have been tweaked and fine tuned to make them do what the end users need to have done. The people that were responsible for design and tweaking have long since retired and there is nobody who understands the totality of the system being replaced, nor the interaction of its parts. 4. As noted, the upper managers who decide on these huge projects are frequently clueless and are driven more to purchase what the nice Micro$oft salespeople want to sell them then they are to field a working system. By the time their bad decisions come home to roost, they are long gone. 5. The projects are usually grossly underestimated and underfunded to obtain initial approval. By the time the true cost of the project is understood the managers have moved on and some poor 3rd level manager is left to pick up the pieces. 6. The worst part of it is that when the project fails, the Government agency is left with an obsolete system that is now 10 years older, the taxpayers are holding the bag, and the cycle needs to be repeated with greater pressure and urgency. (For another example of a failed largescale computer system project, check out the Veterans Administration's COREFLS replacement project which almost brought the Bay Pines, FL VA hospital to a halt: http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=18402842)