June 11, 2015 11:27AM

Federal Technology Failures

By Chris Edwards

A new GAO report describes failures in the federal government’s information technology (IT) activities. The government spends $80 billion annually on IT. These “investments frequently fail, incur cost overruns and schedule slippages, or contribute little to mission‐​related outcomes,” concludes GAO.


The new report summarized some of the failures:

  • the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Expeditionary Combat Support System, which was canceled in December 2012, after spending more than a billion dollars and failing to deploy within 5 years of initially obligating funds;

  • the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Border Initiative Network program, which was ended in January 2011, after the department obligated more than $1 billion to the program, because it did not meet cost‐​effectiveness and viability standards;

  • the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise program, which was intended to be delivered by 2014 at a total estimated cost of $609 million, but was terminated in October 2011 due to challenges in managing the program;

  • the Office of Personnel Management’s Retirement Systems Modernization program, which was canceled in February 2011, after spending approximately $231 million on the agency’s third attempt to automate the processing of federal employee retirement claims;

  • the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, DOD, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s National Polar‐​orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, which was a tri‐​agency weather satellite program that the White House Office of Science and Technology stopped in February 2010 after the program spent 16 years and almost $5 billion; and

  • the VA Scheduling Replacement Project, which was terminated in September 2009 after spending an estimated $127 million over 9 years.

The GAO attributes the problems to “a lack of disciplined and effective management and inadequate executive‐​level oversight.” That is certainly true, but I would also point to more fundamental problems with the nature of government bureaucracy, which I discussed in testimony yesterday.