Tim O’Reilly expanding on Code Red, the Time Magazine piece on how US site heathcare.gov was fixed:
In Silicon Valley, the engineers are on top; if you do something, create something that people actually use, you rule the roost. Everyone else is essentially a paper pusher. In [Washington] DC, though, if you write code, you’re generally about 30 layers away from the people making important decisions. The people who write policy documents and Powerpoint decks rule the roost. You who actually have to make the system work are “details.” You are peons.
Regionalism aside, that’s a great paragraph summarizing why so many government-related IT projects fail.