Glitches in Massive Government Databases?

HBergeron asks: "Rather then post this as another YRO in the litany of new government datamarts there is a more fundamental question for all the coding Slashdot readers out there. This story, in Government Executive magazine, outlines the range of programming glitches in what is a relatively simple database. As a matter of public policy (and taxpayer money) is this level of non-functionality to be expected in these sorts of projects? Is the contractor just ripping off the taxpayers with bad code? How hard is it to write software like this that works?" The article focuses on the SEVIS database, but have others noticed similar trend in other government information systems?