A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just one is online
The root problem is not government.  The same thing happens in the private sector. Large corporations routinely spend gazillions on software projects that end up working poorly or not at all.  Everyone who has worked in Corporate America knows this all too well.The root problem is not bureaucracy either.  Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have fairly large bureaucracies yet they routinely successfully complete massive software projects.The root problem is not "vested interests with complex requirements" either.  When coders with large-scale-project experience were put in charge of revamping Obamacare's healthcare.gov, they figured out how to cope with a wide range of demands from a wide range of constituencies in an efficient manner, and got the job done: http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/02/how-silicon-valley-s...The root problem, I think, is that the people who are put in charge of these massive software projects -- typically, MBAs or lawyers by training -- often don't know anything about how to develop software at scale.  It's like asking people who don't understand rockets to lead development of a new kind of rocket that has never been built before.Edit: added more detail and context to the third paragraph.