A Computer System So Bad It Makes You Want To Cry

from the government-does-it-again dept

Stories about overbudget, overdue, and underperforming IT development/consulting projects are all too common, especially with the government, but this one merits some attention. It seems that some systems designed by EDS and BT Consulting for the U.K.'s Child Support Agency were so rife with problems that it drove employees to intentionally enter wrong data and, even worse, to tears. The CSA spent US$863 million (only $484 million more than planned) for a broken system that was two years late. And it didn't even come with appropriate training: carefully crafted demo disks were substituted for live system use. Of course, horribly designed and implemented IT systems making users cry is nothing new to government agencies. But all the action is in the U.K. these days. The scale of the EDS/BT boondoggle in particular-- both the financial and emotional toll -- ranks up there with the worst of them.

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