Expert tells Appropriations subcommittee to adopt agile procurement, limit contracts to $10 million to curb IT failures

Weldon Jaquith, government delivery manager at nonprofit US Digital Response, told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government that state governments should adopt modern software practices — including agile development, single product ownership, user-centered design, modular architectures and modular contracting — to reduce the risk and cost of major IT projects.

Jaquith opened with a case study of Rhode Island’s Unified Health Infrastructure Project (UHIP), a custom benefits-management system that began with a roughly $100 million contract and, after repeated change orders and delays, swelled to about $364 million. He said the project launched late, disrupted benefit delivery and later suffered a data breach that exposed residents’ personal information. “If the technology fails, the legislation fails,” Jaquith said, urging lawmakers to treat technology and budgeting as inseparable from policy success.

Jaquith summarized research on government IT outcomes: projects costing more than $6 million succeed within 20% of budget, schedule and performance just 11% of the time, he said; $20 million projects succeed only about 2% of the time. He cited Department of Defense reporting that nearly half of large projects met contractual requirements but did not meet end users’ needs, and academic/industry studies showing large portions of written code never enter production.

From those patterns, Jaquith recommended five core practices: use agile development with short, inspectable delivery cycles (he recommended demonstrations every two weeks); assign a single, full-time product owner inside the agency; require user research for projects above roughly $1 million; build systems from loosely coupled components and APIs so pieces can be replaced; and favor modular contracting that keeps individual contracts below $10 million and performance periods under three years.

He outlined specific executive and legislative steps: require biweekly public or legislative demonstrations of progress, prohibit single contracts larger than $10 million (or split large procurements into multiple, smaller contracts), require user researchers on projects over $1 million, mandate a single product owner for major systems, create a small state digital service to advise agencies (modeling Pennsylvania, Colorado and New Jersey), and treat software development as an operating expense (OPEX) rather than a capital expense (CAPEX) where appropriate.

Committee members responded with questions about professional organizations to follow and practical levers for oversight. Jaquith suggested legislators and staff ask for demonstrations, user-research plans, and evidence of incremental delivery. A committee member praised the presentation as “one of the more informative presentations I’ve had in my time in state government.”

No formal votes on policy changes or directives occurred during the meeting; the session consisted of Jaquith’s presentation and a question-and-answer period. Committee members asked staff to pursue briefing materials and Jaquith agreed to share his slide deck and a previously prepared list of oversight questions for legislative staff.

The subcommittee approved routine minutes and later moved to excuse absent members by unanimous consent; neither action altered policy on IT procurement.

Jaquith emphasized the policy risk if procurement and budgeting do not change: technology failures can prevent statutes and programs from working in practice, he said, and legislative drafters should factor implementability and procurement risks into budgeting and oversight decisions.