This month one of the book projects I have been part of has been published by Connor Court Publishing in Australia.
The book is titled «White Elephant Stampede: Case Studies in Policy and Project Management Failures«, and it examines the seemingly endless cavalcade of projects that fail to meet their objectives, cost more than expected and become an ongoing drain on public resources.
From public awareness campaign disasters to payroll system technology collapses, from poorly developed environmental projects to the over-optimistic benefits of proposed Olympic Games, these case studies provide lessons as to why White Elephant projects occur and how they might be avoided.
It is of value to every decision maker and to every concerned citizen. Project Managers, Senior Public Servants, Politicians, Academics and Students will gain valuable insights from this volume.
White Elephant Stampede draws on the research, industry experience, and expertise of an outstanding range of contributors: Gary Banks, Simon Dawkins, Brian Dollery, David Gration, Paul Hooper, Binoy Kampmark, Aynsley Kellow, Bruce Kingston, Justin Macdonnell, Scott Prasser, Nadeem Samnakay, Steven Schwarz and myself.
I contributed the case study on the payroll system that costed Queensland Health AU$1.25 billion. For an overview of all case studies in the book and some background on the contributors see the outline here.
The book was created and edited by David Gration, Bruce Kingston, and Scott Prasser.
Scott, who is a well-known local public policy commentator, was recently a guest on the Economics Explored podcast where he talks about these White Elephant projects. You can listen to the conversation with Scott on podcasting platforms like Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
You can buy the book here.
I am not making any money of it. The reason I joined this project is to spread awareness about how much public and private money is wasted on technology projects, and show better ways of defining, selecting and executing such projects.