The litany of project process failures is deathly familiar to anyone who's been in a corporate IT setting for some time. Unfortunately, not only did it forge forward due to the normal institutional inertia over never admitting defeat, but due to intense visibility and external politics. All the factors that demanded it be reforecast and rolled out later — the criticality of the service it provided and the high political stakes of getting it right — were factors that
prevented it from being reforecast and rolled out later.
“The real news would have been if it actually did work. The very fact that most of it did work at all is a success in itself."
Three years and $600 million is typical? I think, if it actually was a "big corporate" project more heads would be rolling.
Similar in form, if not in price tag. (Arguably, it could be taken as a multi-corporate project, but those are relatively rare.)
And I've known some big corporate projects to utterly fail, not have just a poor kick-off, and still not have key higher-ups take much more than teasing about it.
I'll take your word for it, being a 'non IT' type person, myself, but would think if it was something as large a scope as Healthcare.gov there would be more repercussions.