GAO: “two-thirds of the [DHS] major IT investments were meeting their cost and schedule commitments”

Mar 19

Editor’s Note: GAO’s testimony, DHS Needs to Enhance Management of Major Investments, is attached here. Below is an excerpt.

What GAO Found

Approximately two-thirds of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) major IT investments were meeting their cost and schedule commitments. Specifically, out of 68 major IT investments in development, 47 were meeting cost and schedule commitments. The remaining 21—which DHS had estimated to cost about $1 billion—had one or more subsidiary projects that were not meeting cost and/or schedule commitments (i.e., they exceeded their goals by at least 10 percent, which is the level at which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) considers projects to be at increased risk of not being able to deliver planned capabilities on time and within budget.)

The primary causes for the cost and schedule shortfalls were (in descending order of frequency):

• inaccurate preliminary cost and schedule estimates,

• technical issues in the development phase,

• changes in agency priorities,

• lack of understanding of user requirements, and

• dependencies on other investments that had schedule shortfalls.