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US Spends $1bn Over a Decade Trying To Digitize Immigration Forms, Just 1 Is Online (washingtonpost.com)
Bruce66423 writes: A government project to digitize immigration forms succeeded in enabling exactly one application to be completed and submitted after 10 years of work because of the botched software and implementation. The Washington Post reports: "This project, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, was originally supposed to cost a half-billion dollars and be finished in 2013. Instead, it’s now projected to reach up to $3.1 billion and be done nearly four years from now, putting in jeopardy efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration policies, handle immigrants already seeking citizenship and detect national security threats, according to documents and interviews with former and current federal officials."
How much would it cost to digitize a 1040 and all the dependent schedules from scratch today? I think that's an apt comparison.
In 2012 a co-worker of mine was assigned to a project to work on his company's bid to be part of this fiasco. They finally decided there was no way they were going to get involved. It's not just a handful of forms. It was dozens of large complex forms with intricate underlying business rules driven by volatile legislation and ICE policy.