(Bloomberg) -- Almost a decade before the Obamacare websites failed debut, the Air Force began work on a project to replace 240 outdated networks with a single logistics system.
After spending about $1 billion, the program led by Computer Sciences Corp. collapsed last year. Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain described it as one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory.
The list of federal information-technology lapses and flops includes systems to modernize air-traffic control and to secure the nations border, and now even President Barack Obama is wondering why the government cant get it right.
How we purchase technology in the federal government is cumbersome, complicated and outdated, Obama said Nov. 14 at a press conference, remarks he echoed Tuesday.
Youre going through, you know, 40 pages of specs and this and that and the other and theres all kinds of law involved, he said Nov. 14. And it makes it more difficult -- its part of the reason why, chronically, federal IT programs are over budget, behind schedule.
What the Air Force and healthcare.gov systems had in common were unclear requirements, according to contracting and technology specialists. Projects from a border surveillance program to an FBI case-filing system also have failed because of late changes, a lack of oversight, cost overruns and an emphasis on deadlines rather than the flexibility to let big, complex projects evolve, they say.
They try to force these IT projects through the same kind of process they use to buy desks and staples, says Chris Kemerer, a professor of information systems at the University of Pittsburgh. The problem is, IT systems are never completely off-the-shelf.
The health-insurance website didnt get exhaustive testing and had undergone late changes before it was unveiled Oct. 1 to a public that found it difficult to use. Its initial failure gave ammunition to critics of the Affordable Care Act, the law that set up what critics and supporters alike call Obamacare.
Units of CGI Group Inc. and UnitedHealth Group Inc., both behind the design of healthcare.gov, told lawmakers the government was responsible for testing that should have been done months earlier.
CGI said it got late instructions from the government to make changes to the site. The agency responsible for the website didnt give CGI final technical requirements until May, according to one person familiar with the project. About a third of the work the contractor had previously performed had to be thrown out and started over as a result, the person says.
Marilyn Tavenner, who heads the Health and Human Services Departments Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited some issues with on-time delivery by Montreal-based CGI.
Contractors and federal agencies frequently dont communicate well about the scope of government projects, says Mark Amtower, who runs a consulting firm in Clarksville, Md. He compared the process to a game of telephone, in which messages get increasingly garbled as they pass through different people.
In addition, agency officials typically arent willing to take a chance on lesser-known companies that might do a better job, he says.
Nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM, Amtower says. And nobody gets fired for buying Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, General Dynamics or any of the other top contractors.
Taxpayer dollars
Big technology failures arent limited to the federal government. Large projects are typically handled by multiple companies, or multiple groups within a company, says Michael Cusumano, a professor of management and engineering systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Mass. In troubled projects, workers make changes that arent adequately coordinated, he says.
They make changes in an attempt to improve what youre building, Cusumano says. Inevitably, they dont sync up. The result: two-thirds or more of large IT projects are late or over budget, he adds.
Unlike private industry, though, federal agencies are wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.
The U.S. government has spent more than $600 billion on information technology over the past decade, and has achieved little of the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a July report.
The Air Forces Expeditionary Combat Support System, for example, already had cost $1 billion, and the fixes would have cost about the same amount.
The network, which would have been used by 250,000 people, was intended to provide the service with a single, integrated logistics system for tracking transportation, supply, maintenance, repair, engineering and acquisition.
Computer Sciences, a Falls Church, Va.based contractor, served as the lead contractor and systems integrator. It was given extra time to develop an initial pilot project and was still unable to complete the task, according to a March report by the GAO.
CSC developed and provided to the Air Force foundational capabilities and IT assets for implementing a logistics software system in the future, Heather Williams, a company spokeswoman, says. We believe that the progress we made, jointly with the Air Force, and the software we have delivered could be the foundation for the next effort to develop and deploy a logistics system for the Air Force.
The Air Force took some responsibility for the projects demise. There was a lack of an adequate acquisition process to handle a complex program with nebulous requirements, Lieutenant General Charles Davis, the services top uniformed acquisition official, said in a January interview.
The Air Force system is among 15 information technology projects killed by the federal government since 2003, according to a list compiled by the GAO.
The casualties include a remake of the Federal Bureau of Investigations case-filing system that had poorly defined requirements and limited oversight. It ended in 2005 after three years and $170 million in spending.
An attempt to use surveillance technology to help secure the border also failed to deliver. Chicago-based Boeing Co. received about $1.3 billion for the work beginning in 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government.
Costly rework
The Department of Homeland Security didnt properly oversee Boeing, the governments No. 2 contractor, resulting in costly rework and contributing to the programs history of not delivering promised capabilities and benefits on time and within budget, according to a 2010 GAO report.
At the Federal Aviation Administration, a $438 million replacement of air-traffic computers went over budget and risked being delayed in part because the agency didnt complete technical requirements or follow its own rules for setting completion schedules, an auditor found in May.
In 2003, a database with initial funding of $36.8 million debuted to track foreign students with visas, according to the Justice Departments inspector general.
Schools reported that the system frequently lost data, and immigration forms needed at one school would print out elsewhere.
Some students were barred from entering the U.S. because of problems with the system, says Mark Forman, chief executive officer of Government Transaction Services LLC, a technology company based in Vienna, Va.
Fearful vendors
It was such a big disaster, says Forman, who served under former President George W. Bush in a position now known as the U.S. chief information officer.
A government official told a House subcommittee in 2003 that the student tracking system was developed and deployed under an aggressive schedule.
The main contractor, Electronic Data Systems Corp., bought by Hewlett-Packard Co. for $13.2 billion in 2008, says it knew the system wasnt properly set up and needed to be fixed before its debut, Forman says. The government didnt listen, he says.
The government has told a lot of these contractors so many times that We dont want to hear what you think, we need you to do what we told you to do and make it work, he says. A lot of the vendors are either fearful, or believe there is no point in telling the government how to do it right.
