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.)"

Comments

110%

[chromas]

It's nice to see someone in our government giving 110%.

And this is different from other DOD projects how?

[DesScorp]

Pretty much everything the Pentagon does is over budget, behind schedule, and budget-wise, generally a spawn of wishful thinking. The "cheap" Littoral Combat Ships were sold to Congress as sub-$250 million craft. They're currently just under $700 million apiece. The "cheap" F-35 was promised to be no more than $60 million a copy or so. They're now just under $200 million a copy, flyaway (more expensive than the F-22 they were supposed to compliment). The new Ford class carriers... an evolutionary development of the current Nimitz class.... will now cost 2 1/2 times as much as the last Nimitz that was launched just a few years back.

Why should DOD software be any different than DOD hardware when it comes to wishful thinking from the brass?

Who was on the other side of the table?

[Required Snark]

In my brief stint in the Military/Industrial complex, I noticed that there were always uniformed personal on the government side of the table, and retired military people on the "civilian" side of the table. When officers retire, they leave and go to the private sector, where they end up managing projects for the military.

I expect that the contractors were staffed with lots of "project planners" and "requirements specialists" who went straight from the service to work on these projects. And you can be sure that the ex-military are extremely unlikely to buck the system and stand up to uniformed types. And those in uniform know that they can climb on the retirement gravy train as long as they don't make life too hard for the contractors who they expect to work for when they get out.

It's a recipe for disaster. Nobody is going to make waves, because they are all too busy looking out for their common interest. It's another example of the endemic corruption that is steadily eroding the fundamentals of US society.

Of course this is small change compared to what goes on in the financial sector...

Re:All of that to develop some ERP systems

[mtempsch]

SAP is well-known . . . but I don`t think that many people really know what it actually does.

Sucks the money out of any organization trying to implement it?

what does "overbudget" mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

When government work used to be done by government, it could have gone over budget: you have to buy more raw materials or pay more people to work more hours.

But the whole point in outsourcing is that you pay a fixed amount to third parties to complete a specific job, and they take over the responsibility for making a profit (or, at worst, breaking even).

OK, I lie. The whole point in outsourcing is to give treasury money to your friends, and erode the state in favour of scrounging corporations.

In Japanese it is called "Amakudari"

[Idou]

Amakudari. And it is a recipe for disaster in every industry that it occurs in. . .