A state department of licensing needed a new system to handle registration and license applications. After conducting a thorough systems analysis, the department estimated that the project would cost approximately \($40\) million and take five years to complete. But after seven years and \($40\) million, the project was finally discontinued with no system in place. The system design called for a mix of in-house development and private industry contractors. Although this mix was designed to merge the best of both worlds—that is, detailed internal knowledge and external perspective and expertise—what resulted were countless delays and cost oveiruns due to inadequate communication and poor management. In addi¬ tion, pohtics reared its ugly head. Since this was a government project, elected officials and political appointees could not resist sticking their noses into the project to advance their own personal agendas and siphon off critical resources to fund pet projects. In addition, the project development plan called for too few milestones for a project of this size.

Required

a. Identify and discuss the reasons for this system failure.

b. How could end-user computing have helped this project be successful?

c. What risks could have been incurred by using end-user computing for this particular project?