Sorry but as someone with many decades of experience with various levels of self-interest and corruption, I don't buy your casual "it's a hard problem" excuse.
> In the past 10 years, about 96 % of all government IT programs that cost over $10 million were deemed failures
Would you have us believe these were all hard problems?
> > In the past 10 years, about 96 % of all government IT programs that cost over $10 million were deemed failures
> Would you have us believe these were all hard problems?
First, the statistic the article references appear to be from a Computerworld article[1] which uses "The Standish Group" analysis. This analysis indicates a 96% failure rate for all IT programs costing more than $10 million and is not limited to "government IT programs." In other words, the article failed to meet their user expectations of due diligence in representing a pivotal metric such as this.
Second, as the size of an effort increases in personnel, of course there will be inefficiencies. Waste, self-interest, and possibly corruption as well. But you specifically used the phrase "unhappy IT companies that were riding the gravy train", implying ulterior motives of those organizations and discounting the difficulty involved in a healthcare records project involved two huge organizations.
> In the past 10 years, about 96 % of all government IT programs that cost over $10 million were deemed failures
Would you have us believe these were all hard problems?