it genuinely feels like a big problem with the acquisition of software systems for government services, hospitals etc. is that these systems are regularly

a) replacing an extant bad system
b) enormous and very costly

which makes the people in charge of the purchase very reluctant to deem the system a failure and instead commit to a system that is at best no better than the extant one, at enormous cost, because it would be a "waste of money" otherwise.

but also unclear or incorrect requirements, unrealistic deadlines, pressure to move from the old system to the new etc. on one hand pressure the vendor to ship an incomplete system instead of no system, and on the other hand incentivise the purchaser to accept an incomplete system - it's a mess where to some degree everyone has an incentive to deploy a bad system because if they don't do it then an enormous amount of money and work has accomplished nothing


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