$1B spent between 1971 and 1980
not working satisfactorily.

$250M spent, between 1968 and 1975.
$481M estimated required to complete system; abandonment proposed.

Begun 1966
Target 1968
Abandoned 1970
$39M

Angeline Pantages. Snatching defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Part II, UAL and Univac Datamation, March 1970

"Univac did not deliver the system contracted already two years late by the ...cancellation."

• 17 applications
• ater backed down to 4 (reservations, passenger name records, message switching and inventory control)
• "failure to obtain a full system definition before signing the contract"
• erroneous assumptions about requirements
• unable to meet the transaction rate requirement
• lateness of the EXEC 8 operating system
• extensive United modifications to it
• "enhancement" concurrent with "stabilization"
• too little R&D time
• combined but incompatible efforts to stabilize and enhance the system
• sharply increasing volume requirements

Burroughs hit by TWA suit for $70 million. Wall Street Journal, Friday, October 23, 1970, page 4.

• Burroughs provides hardware and basic system control software; TWA develops the application software for the system.
• Burroughs: "...equipment involved meets or exceeds all requirements and intended-use conditions of the TWA system." "problems...are in the portion of the job assumed by TWA."
• TWA: "...misrepresentation and breach of contract..."
• "...delays in full operational use of system"
• "Airline to give IBM work"

Begun 1965
Abandoned 1968, after three years work it was 2 years behind schedule
$5.4M contract for 2693 intersections, was to have escalated to $100M

New York City Cancels $5.4 million order with Sperry Rand for Traffic Control Plan. Wall Street Journal, Thursday, January 18, 1968, page 7.

• Sperry Rand: "city had made so many changes in the specifications..." "personality conflict between their engineers and the traffic commissioner"
• City: "bullheaded attitude of sperry rand engineers" "lack of supervision by top management, sloppy work, diversion of engineers to other work"
• Sperry Rand underbid two experienced contractors
• Equipment of types never before made
• Sensors had trouble measuring traffic speed, were never delivered.

Marguerite Zientara. System removed from Princeton library. ComputerWorld XI, 49 (December 4, 1978).

• 3M Co. Library Inventory Control System (ICS)
• UPC labels on books and patron cards.
• Book inventory, circulation, fines, bills issued, bills paid
• "Vendor gives up on debugging" after two years of field-testing.
• Average of 4 crashes/hour.
• 3M spokesman: by January 1978, the system was at an "acceptable level of operation", meaning only two crashes/day.
• 3M abandoned the product. Princeton went back to 3x5 cards.

Bernard Wysocki Jr. Some firms, let down by costly computers, opt to 'de-engineer'. Wall Street Journal CCXXXI, 84 (Thursday, April 30, 1998) Eastern Edition page 1

Ron Winslow and George Anders. How new technology was Oxford's nemesis. Wall Stret Journal, Thursday, December 11, 1997, Eastern edition page B1.

• system planned at time of 200,000 members, went on-line with 5X that number.
• new member sign-up took 15 minutes, not the specified six seconds.
• all-or-nothing conversion of records for 1.9 million members.
• new system conversion required clean data. (add a 1000-member account; if there is one buggy SSN field, it rejects the entire account. fix that field, try again, system rejects entire account on next buggy field.)
• lost track of receivables, no backup system. By the time receivables were in figured out, many customers had quit the HMO and bills couldn't be collected.
• lost track of payables; could not track cost of medical care.
• IS managers had no experience with a system this large.

$4 billion project
13 major systems, out of "dozens" currently in use

David Cay Johnston. I.R.S. admits lag in modernization; urges contract plan. New York Times CXLVI, 50,689 (Friday, 31 January 1997) pages A1 and A18.

• 'The Internal Revenue Service conceded today that it had spent $4 billion developing modern computer systems that a top official said "do not work in the real world,"...'
• "Mr. Gross's comments marked the first time that [the I.R.S.] said it would have to scrap the project altogether and start over."
• suggests abandoning the "big bang" theory of integrating all of the computers at once, and instead improve oprations piecemeal.
• error rate for paper filed returns is 22%, with half the errors caused by I.R.S. clerks. error rate on electronically filed returns is nearly zero.