June 11, 2015 11:27AM # Federal Technology Failures By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE [A new GAO report](http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/670745.pdf) 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](https://www.cato.org/publications/testimony/reducing-wasteful-federal-spending-0). ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).