[hga]

As an US RKBA activist since the early '70s (sic), I watched it from a distance in horrified fascination, and the Wikipedia section you cite matches my memories, that while the IT component was nasty and much bigger than expected/hoped/etc., it wasn't what crushed the registry. The job, including most especially human processing effort, was just massively larger than anticipated and was therefore not even vaguely covered by the statutory fees.

[iharris]

Yeah, this was a good lesson how not to manage a large IT project. They didn't really understand the requirements or anticipate the user load, but the cost estimates were WAY off - from an anticipated $2m annual net cost, the actual net cost ballooned to $66.4m for 2010-2011. To be fair, the federal government was also at fault here but this absolutely blows my mind.

[swamp40]

Honestly, you would think that a company that has experienced "massively larger than anticipated" once before would be a good choice for this project.

[hga]

I guess it depends on the tradeoffs of reputational damage and making money. I gather the government told them "build a system that can handle 50,000 to 60,000 simultaneous users", which was "based partly on the all-time high of 30,000 simultaneous users for Medicare.gov" presumebly during the Plan D enrollment season (although per the article the theoretical max of healthcare.gov has not been disclosed: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/05/health-...).

Whatever the company thinks of the official goal, there's strict limits to how much extra they can spend to handle a much larger goal, vs. their getting paid on an emergency basis to bulk up the site....