The Death of BRIDGE: The US Government’s IT Failure of the Year
UPDATE: Given the events of the past day, I feel it’s worth referring back to my post from last February in which I discuss how intelligence failures are normally dealt with, and propose a more common sense solution. BRIDGE, the program I discuss below, would have provided a model for doing some of the things I recommended.
Back in October, the Director of National Intelligence killed a program called BRIDGE. (I’ve written about BRIDGE before.) As such a vocal advocate of BRIDGE with a financial interest in its success, my bias is clear, but for whatever that biased opinion is worth, BRIDGE’s death was the biggest government IT failure of 2009.
The cause of BRIDGE’s death is the most frustrating aspect of it, and it’s a reminder of what makes government innovation so logistically difficult: BRIDGE wasn’t deemed a failure or a waste or a PR risk. Technically, it wasn’t even killed; it was just put on ice. Following the presidential transition, new priorities were made at the top levels of the bureaucracy. These priorities had nothing to do with BRIDGE in particular, or any other tech-related goals. BRIDGE just got lost in the shuffle along with countless other programs that deserve attention.… Read the rest