# List of failed and overbudget custom software projects

This is a list of notable custom software projects which have significantly failed to achieve some or all of their objectives, either temporarily or permanently, and/or have suffered from significant cost overruns.
Note that failed projects, and projects running over budget, are not necessarily the sole fault of the employees or businesses creating the software. In some cases, problems may be due partly to problems with the purchasing organisation, including poor requirements, over-ambitious requirements, unnecessary requirements, poor contract drafting, poor contract management, poor end-user training, or poor operational management.

## Permanent failures

Because software, unlike a major civil engineering construction project, is often easy and cheap to change after it has been constructed, a piece of custom software that fails to deliver on its objectives may sometimes be modified over time in such a way that it later succeeds—and/or business processes or end-user mindsets may change to accommodate the software. However, sometimes, for various reasons, neither approach succeeds (or is even tried), and this may be considered as another level of failure—a permanent failure.
| Started | Terminated | System name | Type of system | Country or region | Type of purchaser | Problems | Cost (expected) | Outsourced or in-house? | Outcome |
| 1980s | 1993 | TAURUS | Electronic trading platform | United Kingdom (London) | Stock exchange | Scope creep, cost overrun. The project was never completed. | £75m | ? | Cancelled |
| 1982 | 1994 | FAA Advanced Automation System | Air Traffic Control | United States | Federal Aviation Administration | Cost overruns, underestimation of ATC complexity, delays, non-incremental change. existing system. | $3–6b | ? | Scrapped |
| 1984 | 1990 | RISP | Integrated computer services | United Kingdom (Wessex) | Wessex Health Authority | Scope creep, cost overrun. The project was never completed. | £63m (£29m) | ? | Cancelled |
| 1994 | 1999 | INCIS | Crime information | New Zealand | New Zealand Police | Frequently changing development staff, hardware, software and scope. | approx NZD$110m | Outsourced to IBM NZ | Cancelled, then hardware partially reused |
| 1997 | 2000 | Bolit | Customer service, finance and administration system | Sweden | Patent and Registration Office | Too complicated, bad functioning, cost overrun. The project was after completion never used, the agency still today does not have a working IT system. | SEK 300m ($35m) | Outsourced | Scrapped |
| 1999 | 2006 | CSIO Portal | Common technological platform for brokers and insurers to improve workflow efficiency | Canada | Centre for Study of Insurance Operations | Low user adoption, conflict between insurers, new technology, lack of funding | ~$15 million CAD"CSIO portal abandoned due to lack of insurer support and availability of other solutions". | Outsourced to IBM"Reconfiguring CSIO". | Abandoned |
| 2000 | 2009 | Customer Account Data Engine | System for handling tax records and processing tax returns, replacement for the Individual Master File and others | United States | Internal Revenue Service | Low user adoption, performance issues, scope creep, never replaced IMF and other mainframe software, some dating back to the Kennedy Administration | ~US$500 million | Outsourced to IBM, Northrop Grumman and others | Abandoned, intended to be replaced by CADE 2 |
| 2002 | 2011 | NHS Connecting for Health | Electronic care records | United Kingdom | Central government | Beset by delays and ballooning costs, and the software part of it was never finished. The government was also criticised for not demonstrating value for money. Although the contracts were drafted to ensure that the contractors would be forced to bear a significant portion of the cost of the project going wrong if it did go wrong, in reality this did not always happen. The NPfIT was described by Members of Parliament as one of the "worst and most expensive contracting fiascos" ever. | £12bn (£2.3bn) | Outsourced | Discontinued, but some parts continued |
| 2005 | 2012 | Expeditionary Combat Support System | Military Enterprise Resource Planning | United States | Air force | No significant capabilities ready on time; would have cost $1.1bn more just to get to 1/4 of the original scope. | $1.1bn | Outsourced – including requirements | Cancelled |
| 2007 | 2012 | da:Polsag | Police case management | Denmark | Police | Did not work properly, technical problems with contractor. | DKK 500m ($70m) | Outsourced | Cancelled |
| 2007 | 2014 | e-Borders | Advanced passenger information programme | United Kingdom | UK Border Agency | A series of delays. | over £412m (£742m) | Outsourced | Cancelled |
| 2007 | 2010 | Försäkringskassan SAP | Dental health service system | Sweden | Social Insurance Agency | Not fit for purpose, multiple delays, cost overrun. | SEK 10bn ($1.18bn) | Outsourced, then insourced | Cancelled |
| 2008 | 2013 | Digital Media Initiative | Digital production, media asset management | United Kingdom | Public service broadcaster | By 2013, the project was judged to be obsolete (as much cheaper commercial off the shelf alternatives by then existed) and was scrapped by BBC management. The Director-General of the BBC said it had been a huge waste of money. | more than £98m (£81.7m) | Outsourced, then insourced, then outsourced again | Cancelled |
| 2009 | 2013 | The Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (SIREN) | Crime & criminal intelligence logging system | United Kingdom (Surrey) | Police Force | Not fit for purpose | £14.8m | Outsourced | Scrapped |
| 2011 | 2014 | Pust Siebel | Police case management | Sweden | Police | Poor functioning, inefficient in work environments. | SEK 300m ($35m) | Outsourced | Scrapped |
| 2012 | 2014 | Cover Oregon | Healthcare exchange website | United States | State government | Site was never able to accept online enrollments, so users were instructed to mail in paper enrollments instead. | approx $200m | Outsourced | Cancelled, then client and supplier both sued each other |
| 2017 | 2023 | Distributed Ledger Technology (generic name) | Electronic trading platform | Australia | Australian Stock Exchange | System was too complex and only 60% completed | $AU 170m expended | Outsourced | Cancelled |

## Temporary issues and budget overruns

| Started | System name | Type of system | Country or region | Type of purchaser | Problems | Cost (expected) | Outsourced or in-house? |
| 1992 | LASCAD | Computer-aided dispatch for emergency ambulances | United Kingdom (London) | Central government | Ambulance delays and other problems were caused by the introduction of the system. More than 30 people may have died as a result, making it the largest computer-related disaster until the downing of Boeing 737 MAX planes in 2019. The Chief of the London Ambulance Service resigned as a result of the problems and the adverse publicity. | £1.5m | Outsourced |
| 2002 | Smart Systems for Health / eHealth Ontario | Electronic health record | Ontario, Canada | Provincial government | eHealth Ontario is a group of projects that replaced a previous failed project, Smart Systems for Health, which "spent $650 million but failed to produce anything of lasting value." However, in 2009 the CEO of the eHealth Ontario agency resigned, followed by the government minister responsible for overseeing the agency, after a scandal over excessive payments to consultants. In the next audit in 2016, the Auditor General of Ontario noted that 14 years after Smart Systems for Health was started, not all of the eHealth projects were complete, and it was impossible to even determine if they were overbudget because the government had never originally put a budget on them. | Can$8bn (unknown) | In-house, but with heavy use of consultants |
| 2013 | HealthCare.gov | Healthcare exchange website | United States | Federal government | By some estimates, only 1% of people managed to successfully enroll with the site in its first week of operation. On October 20, 2013, President Barack Obama remarked, "There's no sugar coating: the website has been too slow, people have been getting stuck during the application process and I think it's fair to say that nobody's more frustrated by that than I am." | $1.5bn ($93.7m) | Outsourced |
| 2013 | Queensland Health Payroll System | Payroll system | Australia | State government | The Queensland Health Payroll System was launched in 2010 in what could be considered one of the most spectacularly over budget projects in Australian history, coming in at over 200 times the original budget. In spite of promises that the new system would be fully automated, the new system required a considerable amount of manual operation. | $AUD 1.2bn ($6m) | Outsourced |

## Projects with ongoing problems

Until the significant problems with these projects are resolved, or the projects cancelled, it is not yet possible to classify them into one of the above categories.
| Started | System name | Type of system | Country or region | Type of purchaser | Problems | Cost (expected) | Outsourced or in-house? |
| 2013 | Canada.ca | Government website portal | Canada | Central government | Original plan was to consolidate 1,500 Canadian government websites into a single portal on a single platform. In over three years, only 10,000 webpages of a total 17 million have successfully been migrated. | $9.4 million + $28 million (ongoing) | Outsourced platform and proprietary software |
| 2007 | PRIO | Logistic and financial system | Sweden | Armed Forces | Parts of the system was put into use in 2009, with reports of big usability issues following. In 2012 troubles with supply of spare parts was reported, causing multiple Gripen fighter jets to be put out of service. The air force was operating at a 70% capacity, another area was reported to operate at a 3% capacity with half of the staff not able to work at all. It would take up to a year to restore capacity. At this point the cost to scrap the project and develop a new one was estimated to be SEK 11bn ($1.3bn). Not seen as an alternative, the development continued and the original budget of SEK 2.4bn was increased to 4bn. In 2015 the project was still on its way to be fully implemented. | SEK 4bn ($470m) (ongoing) | Technical aspects outsourced |
| 2013 | Universal Credit | Welfare payments system consolidation | United Kingdom | Central government | The schedule has slipped, with the final delivery date now expected to be 2021, although the system is gradually being introduced. In 2013, only one of four planned pilot sites went live on the originally scheduled date, and the pilot was restricted to extremely simple cases. | £12.8bn (estimated) (£2.2bn) | Outsourced |
| 2010 | Standard Business Reporting (Australian Taxation Office) | Electronic Reporting to Government | Australia | Statutory authority | 6 years after program started in 2010, approximately $800m to $1bn has been spent in total. A significant portion of this spend was composed of contracting fees to IBM and Fujitsu. As of early 2016, business take up of electronic reporting was 2-3%. Program has also suffered from significant scope creep and confused objectives. It is likely that choice of XBRL as the reporting format is the main driver behind low take-up (due to its obscurity and high implementation cost relative to other technical standards). | ~$1bn to date (ongoing) | Technical aspects outsourced |