After the disastrous October launch of the Obamacare website — HealthCare.gov — members of Congress and others have called for someone to be held accountable. Several publications wrote stories speculating over which “heads would roll” because of the website fiasco.

If the White House were to fire one or more people, it might give the impression of the government holding people accountable, expecting competence. But the truth is, at least when it comes to large computer-technology projects, the embarrassingly flawed ObamaCare website is the norm, not the exception.

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this month that “Technology failures grow all too common in government projects.” The article began with a description of failed attempts to link several databases through a website. The project involved contract missteps, missed deadlines and cost overruns. The people trying to use the website complained that it was unworkable.

It’s Obamacare, right? No, the failed website and database project described is the article is SAM.gov, a General Services Administration project.

The Times’ story looked at seferal big information technology failures in the federal government, some costing hundreds of millions of dollars, and concluded that “technology failures have become the rule in the federal government, not the exception.”

The article noted that technology failures are not uncommon in the private sector, but it pointed out that failures within the federal government appear much more common — and cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

The Times’ story reported that the federal government will spend $76 billion on information technology projects this year, and a federal report released early in the year revealed that 700 projects, amounting to $12.5 billion in taxpayer dollars, are “in trouble.”

The problem, at least part of the problem, lies in a “byzantine contracting system” that is ill-suited to a fast-moving field like information technology. One IT professional said the federal IT appropriations process is “stuck in the horse and buggy era.”

The ObamaCare website mess was highly visible because it was promoted so heavily by the Obama administration, which understands that large numbers of people have to sign up and pay for health insurance policies for Obamacare to work. The law needs millions of younger, healthy people to pay for insurance they probably won’t need to subsidize the older and sicker people who need more health care than they can afford.

For all the outrage over the ObamaCare website glitches, missed deadlines and likely cost overruns, taxpayers should hear more from Congress about all the other federal IT failures.

Some observers give the Obama administration some credit for trying to modernize the federal government’s IT processes. But experts have concluded that any improvements have been modest, at best.

As a candidate for president, Obama, attracted the sharpest computer engineers and website professionals to help him raise hundreds of millions of dollars online and manage voter demographic data better than any other presidential candidate before him. Obama’s candidacy was closely associated with cutting-edge technology and his ability to employ dedicated computer wizards to help win elections. But winning elections and governing — or managing the massive federal bureaucracy — are different.

It’s ironic to see Obama, as president, embarrassed by a failed healthcare website and presiding over an antiquated, mismanaged federal IT process.

Rather than focus just on what caused the ObamaCare website failure — which seems selective and partisan, given the evidence of many similar failures — Congress should expose and examine the other mismanaged and bungled federal IT projects. Every expert says the need for changes, and accountability, is obvious. Congress should use this opportunity to make the federal government more efficient, not just score political points.