Bad management, shifting requirements, scope creep. It's not about touchy feely aspects at all and it's unlikely that 'people' got their hands on the gear in any relevant #'s for any practical span of time. They sunk a bunch of money, looked around, understood they'd have to sink a bunch more money, it would probably be too late to be acceptable so they killed it.

The number of 'large' IT projects is at least 50% that's the baseline we use and I'm one of the guys called in to salvage stuff like that.

...still use only typewriters and abacuses as well?

Do they hear the term "Excel spreadsheet" - and visualize a bed linen that has been smoothed and tucked very, very well?

for about a year. i wasn't directly involved with the handhelds, i spent all my time trying to help get the web-based administration parts working. you wouldn't think it would be all that hard...

there's plenty of blame to spread around (harris was the prime contractor but accenture had a huge presence too) but one thing the news reports mentioned but didn't emphasize enough - census took a very hands off approach to directing and managing the project. basically we were told to "just make it work". when the monkeys are building the system as well as defining the requirements, there's no way it'll work. i've never been so glad to leave a project in my life.

Those guys DEFINE drunk and disorderly.

A failed project doesn't mean the idea fails. Computer input is done by barely trained, low skilled workers all the time. Look at McDonald's or almost any other restaurant. Please don't tell me that any of the people inputting orders to the cash register have resumes full of computer skills and plenty of On-the-job training.

I spent 3 months working for the Federal Gov't. That was enough to make me fully believe that whoever was in charge of this project might have come in late, left early, taken long lunches and in between not bothered to figure out what was going on and that the failure of the project did not damage his career at all.

That's the problem, not technology.