Having observed a few big projects failed like that in my country, I can't deny the feeling that "throw big money onto company/institute(s) X to deliver a very big system that will replace the old system on day Y" is an awesome recipe for a spectacular failure, regardless of the software development process and skills of the programmers. Eventually the initial failure would be converted into something usable by spending 10x more money and 10x more time.
Contrary, a minority of national-level projects that succeeded here were always almost things that were initially planned to be very small, experimental, with no hard deadline and implemented without a big-bang in media. The biggest distinction is that the small systems tend to be put in production only partially but much earlier, often as an opt-in, working in parallel to the old often paperwork based systems. So there was no huge switch to something new and the risk was pretty small. This is what agile means to me.
Contrary, a minority of national-level projects that succeeded here were always almost things that were initially planned to be very small, experimental, with no hard deadline and implemented without a big-bang in media. The biggest distinction is that the small systems tend to be put in production only partially but much earlier, often as an opt-in, working in parallel to the old often paperwork based systems. So there was no huge switch to something new and the risk was pretty small. This is what agile means to me.