Mitigating Common IT Vendor Risks in the Public Sector

Government agencies don’t expect perfection. What they do expect is responsiveness, transparency, and delivery on commitments. When vendors fall short, relationships break down and taxpayer dollars are wasted. The good news is these issues are fixable, and they’re rarely about the actual technology.

But why do so many government technology projects run into the same problems time after time? Public sector technology initiatives face complex challenges, but many failures can be traced back to common IT vendor patterns. Too often, IT vendors repeat the same mistakes – mistakes that could easily be avoided with better planning, accountability, and collaboration. By identifying red flags early and structuring vendor relationships to address them, governments can implement reliable, long-term solutions.

10 red flags to identify and address

Based on our specialists’ experience providing third-party procurement and project support for various government modernizations, here are 10 common red flags that can derail government IT projects.

• Overpromising and underdelivering
  Enthusiastic vendor sales teams often overpromise a solution to meet an organization’s needs. Then, once transitioned to the implementation team, the vendor often falls short in meeting solution expectations. The result? Unnecessary time and energy spent reestablishing expectations and determining the impact on a path to move forward.
• Vendor acquisitions without integration
  To expand breadth and functional capabilities, larger technology vendors often acquire smaller vendor solutions. An unfortunate consequence of such acquisitions can be a lack of full organizational integration that results in disparate, siloed vendor teams instead of a single, cohesive team. Technology integration can also be disrupted because the system and data flow aren’t streamlined and cohesive.
• Project management turnover
  Turnover happens in any organization, but how a company manages its turnover is paramount, especially when it takes place during active software implementation. Turnover of key project leadership or management roles can create inconsistencies, confusion, a breakdown in communication, and rework. An inability to proactively manage this type of change could significantly affect the vendor-agency relationship and ultimately project success.
• Lack of accountability
  Direct questions met with jargon, hedging, or noncommittal responses from a vendor team signal a lack of accountability and expertise. Successful implementations provide vendor teams that include more technical staff and other subject-matter experts, which allows customers direct access to the team members who can answer questions, engage in troubleshooting, and provide the level of transparency that an agency desires. 
• Ghosting the client
  Agencies are reasonable when vendors are open and collaborative. They value consistent communication even if technical answers aren’t available yet. But when vendors don’t show up at key times, ignore questions, avoid issues, or drop communication entirely, trust is broken. Some vendors tend to react in waves. They’ll bring a large group on-site but then disappear shortly afterward because they have other customers to tend to. Clients appreciate a smaller and more hands-on team, a clear single point of contact, and something simple that everyone can appreciate: responsiveness.
• Empty promises
  Overpromising and underdelivering is a guaranteed path to frustration. Governments can’t afford empty commitments that evaporate when delivery time comes. They’d rather have honest and direct communication, even when it’s tough, as opposed to overly optimistic verbal commitments that fall through later.
• The vanishing punch list
  Agencies can experience pressure to go live with promises of a resolved punch list to follow shortly after. But we see unresolved issues resurface repeatedly because punch lists aren’t closely documented, are not agreed to, or are sometimes even lost. Clients shouldn’t have to explain the same problems more than once.
• Post go-live support failure
  The go-live team celebrates a launch, then disappears. Without a smooth handoff to the support team, agencies are left stranded when issues arise.
• Hollow SLAs
  How long should agencies expect to wait for resolution? Service-level agreements (SLAs) that look good on paper but carry no weight in practice are worse than useless. They give agencies false confidence without accountability. SLAs should be specific and measurable, with clear escalations and consequences when broken. Too many vendors bring loose SLAs without clear definitions or no contractual SLA at all.
• Road map evasions and lack of end-to-end ownership
  Hearing “that could be in a future release” without any real commitment is frustrating enough. Not communicating product sunset dates only compounds the damage. Too many full-product suites are little more than siloed tools bundled together. Customers desire to be part of the solution and provide product input to expand the platform if vendors will listen.

From frustration to fixes: A smarter path for agencies

Agencies don’t have to accept these pitfalls as inevitable. By structuring contracts and governance upfront, government agencies can safeguard their projects and develop successful vendor partnerships where everyone wins.

Practical steps that agencies can take include:

• Employing proactive procurement support services to balance agency and vendor needs from the outset, including key protections in the statement of work (SOW), contract, and supporting materials
• Requiring and recording scenario-based demonstrations during procurement to see real-life situations unfold and meeting the real implementation team rather than the sales team alone
• Establishing project structure early in the procurement process by defining governance, expectations, and key expected outcomes
• Creating a structured project management office (PMO) and formalizing organizational change management frameworks to keep delivery on track and allow room for pivoting
• Getting help to manage vendors and confirming that they have the agency’s best interests in mind
• Building in stage gates and interim milestone sign-offs for continual accountability
• Tying milestone payments to sign-offs and specific outcomes so the agency pays for progress and expectations met, not promises
• Directly embedding SLAs into contracts, with measurable and enforceable terms
• Requiring support and go-live sign-off in the SOW so that agencies aren’t pressured to go-live prematurely and projects don’t stall after launch

From contract to delivery: Getting support every step of the way

Government agencies are complex, and they must manage a web of stakeholders and commitments to deliver services to the public. At Crowe, we understand the challenges agencies face when managing technology modernization projects. We also understand the IT vendor landscape and how agencies need to operate to be successful.

Our specialists can bridge the gap and help governments design procurement strategies, implement strong PMO structures, support change and user adoption, and create accountability mechanisms that protect public dollars and deliver value for the public. Our holistic approach helps create a structure to address the human side of technological change and the simple expectations that all customers desire: responsiveness, transparency, and care.