6 IT Projects, $8 Billion Over Budget At Dept. of Defense

McGruber writes "The Federal Times has the stunning (but not surprising) news that a new audit found six Defense Department modernization projects to be a combined $8 billion — or 110 percent — over budget. The projects are also suffering from years-long schedule delays. In 1998, work began on the Army's Logistics Modernization Program (LMP). In April 2010, the General Accounting Office issued a report titled 'Actions Needed to Improve Implementation of the Army Logistics Modernization Program' about the status of LMP. LMP is now scheduled to be fully deployed in September 2016, 12 years later than originally scheduled, and 18 years after development first began! (Development of the oft-maligned Duke Nukem Forever only took 15 years.)"

Obligatory

[gaelfx]

First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have none for twice the price?

In Japanese it is called "Amakudari"

[Idou]

Amakudari [wikipedia.org]. And it is a recipe for disaster in every industry that it occurs in. . .

Re:All of that to develop some ERP systems

[Octorian]

Even if the specific example may have been blown way out of proportion, I actually see a lot of the plainly-worded outrage as a complete misunderstanding of how the whole DoD acquisition process [dau.mil] actually works.

To this end, I once wrote up a notional piece on The Mythical $800 Hammer [blogspot.com]. :-)