A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations.
Etymology
"Boondoggle" was the name of the newspaper of the Roosevelt Troop of the Boy Scouts, based in Rochester, New York, and it first appeared in print in 1927. From there it passed into general use in scouting in the 1930s. It was attributed to a boy scout from Rochester who coined the term to describe "a new type of uniform decoration". After the presentation of honorific boondoggles at a World Jamboree, the use of the word spread to other troops and branches. An Oakland scout troop presented a "boondoggle" as an award for attendees who spent seven days and nights at Camp Dimond. That boondoggle was described as a "red leather strip which terminates in a red wooden diamond on which is painted the number 1930." The "boondoggle" was described in the Ogden Standard-Examiner in 1930 as a hand-made item crafted from brightly colored leather strips. In 1931, it was similarly described as a "bright lanyard made of leatherstrip".
Early usage
In 1935, an article in The New York Times reported that more than $3 million had been spent on recreational activities for the jobless as part of the New Deal. Among these activities were crafts classes, where the production of "boon doggles", described in the article as various utilitarian "gadgets" made with scoubidou cloth or leather, were taught. The phrase became popular due to its use by the flamboyant criminal lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker.
In her 1993 memoir Nothing But the Truth, journalist Marguerite Young wrote of the 1930s: I thought official figures and events seemed to say the biggest thing was relief–feeding the hungry, made work such as raking leaves which gave the English language a new word, boondoggle.
Dynamics
The term "boondoggle" may also be used to refer to protracted government or corporate projects involving large numbers of people and usually heavy expenditure, where at some point, the key operators, having realized that the project will never work, are still reluctant to bring this to the attention of their superiors. Generally there is an aspect of "going through the motions"—for example, continuing research and development—as long as funds are available to keep paying the researchers' and executives' salaries.
The situation can be allowed to continue for what seems like unreasonably long periods, as senior management are often reluctant to admit that they allowed a failed project to go on for so long. In many cases, the actual device itself may eventually work, but not well enough to ever recoup its development costs.
One example is the RCA "SelectaVision" video disk system project, begun in the early 1960s and continuing for nearly 20 years, long after cheaper and better alternatives had come to market. RCA was estimated to have spent about $750 million (1985 dollars) (equivalent to $1.65 billion in 2014 dollars) on this commercially nonviable system, which was one of the factors leading to its sale to GE and later breakup in 1986.
Balanced literacy, a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s, was prominent in early literacy curricula across the United States until the 2020s after decades of overall low reading achievement and a persistent racial gap. One publisher of balanced literacy materials, Heinemann made at least $1.6 billion in sales during a ten-year period between 2012 and 2022. Supporters of balanced literacy claim there is no reading crisis because the scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were mostly flat for decades, with 37 percent reading below Basic level. However, at least 18 states are considering new laws to remove balanced literacy and instead use methods aligned with cognitive science research about how children learn to read.
The Zumwalt-class destroyer and Littoral combat ship have been described similarly.
The Berlin Brandenburg Airport opened eight years after its original scheduled completion at a cost of 7 billion euros, almost three times its original budget. One of the more glaring causes of its overruns was a fire safety system intended to vent smoke downward, against its natural flow. This system was devised by one of the project's designers who falsely claimed to be an engineer.