Comment by jandrewrogers

The big system integrators are often pretty terrible at their jobs but it isn't the only cause.

Extremely expensive software projects in government have a common thread in every case I have first-hand experience with. The government has no consistent vision of what they want or who is the final arbiter of these decisions, and no person in the government is accountable for the outcomes. Both the requirements and responsibility are spread across so many people that for all practical purposes there are no clear requirements and no accountability.

The government software programs that run well in my experience have the organizational equivalent of a BDFL. A BDFL doesn't really exist in government; even when someone acts in that role they are often reassigned to other projects at random.