Why So Many Government IT Projects Fail

Why do massive government IT projects so often go over budget and miss deadlines? Lucas and Luna dig into one of the biggest examples: the UK's NHS National Programme for IT, launched in 2002 and effectively abandoned by 2011 after spending over £12 billion. They trace the core problems: scope creep, fragmented procurement, misaligned incentives between vendors and agencies, and the lack of agile development practices. The episode also looks at more recent U.S. examples, including HealthCare.gov's disastrous 2013 launch and the lessons learned. Lucas explains how a shift toward modular contracts and iterative delivery is slowly changing procurement, but why political timelines and congressional budgeting still fight against it. A concrete, numbers-driven look at how governments waste billions on software. #GovernmentIT #PublicSectorTech #NHS #HealthCareGov #ITFailures #Procurement #AgileGovernment #ScopeCreep #BudgetOverruns #DigitalTransformation #Economics #PublicFinance #GovernmentSpending #TechDebt #ModularContracts #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #GovernmentEfficiency Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo