Of course, there's a level of disclosure for Government run projects that means their blunders get exposed more easily.
I'm quite sure there are some spectacular failures in the corporate world that won't make the list.
I'm quite sure there are some spectacular failures in the corporate world that won't make the list.
The ones you hear about are the ones the government ministers foolishly chose to boast about in some answer in parliament or announce in some TV interview. Normally that's when consultants pounce on it and offer to help make it succeed [i.e. vampire all the money away in insane fees]. A minister announcing it is practically the death-knell of a project.
The ones which succeed generally keep publicity and announcements to an absolute minimum and keep tight control. That's way more difficult than you imagine on a government project as civil servants go hunting for projects to buddy up to in order to pad their promotion cv. If your project budget is more than the last one they screwed, they're all over it so they can boast about the incremental increase in projects they contributed to - a major promotion point (as no-one checks if the project succeeded, the promotion is hinged on how much public money it pissed away).
I was ecstatic to leave UK Gov projects behind.
When a piece of private software flops, it still exists as a product and however bad, often offsets some of its cost in sales.
Since most public software is offered for free, no cost is visibly recouped.
Healthcare.gov is actually a great example. It was a colossal failure at first. A quantity easily measured in dollars spent. However, it has largely functioned in the years since but measuring its positive economic impact is hard because the service is delivered free. None if that money has been reclaimed but it certainly has had some positive economic value.