I'd be cautious about assuming anything about the project from an article.  I'm sure you've been on enough project to know that the only people who understand what really went wrong are those working on the project.  And they usually don't give the full truth to reporters because they are trying to cover their a a**

With that said, this is a government project.  It probably had rediculously complex and verbose specifications.  And yes the requirements were probably changing.  We all know they difficulties of trying to conform to a strict waterfall methodology.  Requirements change, that's life.

With this type of system, the most important part of the project should have been the data model.  You have 100s of systems that all need to interface and exchange data.  It all starts with the data.