Pentagon Kills Off HR IT Project After 780% Budget Overrun, Years Of Delays

By Brandon Vigliarolo of The Register

After blowing deadlines and budgets for years, the Pentagon has finally pulled the plug on a troubled project to overhaul its outdated civilian HR IT systems.

Like many government projects before it, the US Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System (DCHRMS) promised big things when it was kicked off nearly a decade ago. According to a memo [PDF] signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth late last week, the program was intended to streamline a large portion of the DoD’s legacy HR IT systems, but it’s being axed after officials concluded pouring more funds into it would be “throwing more good taxpayer money after bad.”

DCHRMS started in 2018 with a planned development timeline of one year and a budget of $36 million, “but instead it’s taken eight years and is currently $280 million over budget – that’s 780 percent over budget,” Hegseth said in a video announcing the DCHRMS and other spending cuts. “We’re not doing that anymore.”

That’s not to say the DoD is giving up on modernizing its civilian HR systems – the memo noted that the Pentagon still wants a new solution, with Hegseth directing officials to develop a fresh plan within 60 days to achieve the project’s original goals.

While the headline item in the memo is the cancellation of DCHRMS, Hegseth ordered cuts to additional programs, contracts, and grants too.

The memo mentioned the cancellation of more than $360 million in grant programs “in areas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and related social programs, climate change, social science, COVID-19 pandemic response” and the like, stating these efforts were not aligned with the DoD’s current priorities.

We’ve reached out to the Defense Department to get a more complete list of the programs being terminated, but Hegseth did single out a couple in the video. In particular, he pointed to a $6 million grant for decarbonizing the emissions from US Navy ships and a $9 million university grant to develop “equitable AI and machine learning models.”

“I need lethal machine learning models,” Hegseth said. “Not equitable machine learning models.” 

The memo also directed the cancellation of $30 million in contracts with Gartner and McKinsey for analysis products and what Hegseth described as “unused licenses” from “external consulting services.” The move echoes the ongoing scrutiny of federal consulting contracts, such as reviews of deals involving Accenture, IBM, and Deloitte.

In total, the memo states DoD is eliminating $580 million of government spending, though only $170 million will be able to be reallocated. 

Hegseth credited Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency for its ability to root out the canceled programs, which, in addition to the cuts announced at the end of last week, now totals $800 million “in wasteful spending canceled over the first few weeks” of the Pentagon’s DOGE review – but it won’t be the last. 

“Stay tuned,” Hegseth said. “We have a lot more coming.”