Arlington National Cemetery's Many IT Flaws

imac.usr writes "A story in today's Washington Post calls to light the utter failure of the nation's most sacred final resting place to modernize its pen-and-paper record system. According to the story, the cemetery's administrators have spent $5 million without managing to accomplish the seemingly simple task of creating a database record of the site's graves. As Virginia senator Mark Warner points out, 'We are one fire, or one flood, or one spilled Starbucks coffee away from some of those records being lost or spoiled.'"

Comments

Accountability

[Pete Venkman]

Where's accountability when 5 million gets spent and nobody can even make something as simple as a SPREADSHEET?

Even the government can do better than this

[Chris Mattern]

The article notes that the Veterans' Administration *has* computerized graves registration elsewhere, successfully, covering ten times the number of graves at one-third the cost of this utterly failed effort.