This is especially true with software applications. You study the options, you make a decision and you commit resources toward a software program. What sends "Danger Will Robinson" signals to me is when you are developing a solution from scratch. While I've been involved with one recently, www.firsttosee.org, that I think is a terrific social media management system I've been around for the birthing of another general information management system that look to me to be dead on arrival — even at conception. Sure enough, millions of dollars later — it is dead and buried with no good results from the experience other than to line the pockets of consultants. Then just recently I heard of another system having a "wooden stake driven into its heart" to finally kill it after several years of a lingering death — and a continued allocation of resources for no good purpose.
Sometimes what leads us to keep pumping resources into a solution is that we don't want to say we failed. That we tried, but it didn't work! Other times someone has overreached what can logically be done for a regional solution. Another old quote I remember is, "When you find yourself riding a dead horse, dismount!"
There are few cookie-cutter solutions out there. It is a lesson that I think our federal partners, in the majority, still need to learn.
