The following appeared overnight.
GAO's 9 common critical success factors of federal IT projects
November 22, 2011 | Tom Sullivan, Editor
Knowing which tactics make for smooth, investment-worthy IT efforts can be as tricky as the projects themselves. Looking to shed some light on the matter, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) compiled a list of best practices based on interviews with CIOs and other acquisitions and procurement officials.
Using as a basis seven government IT projects – one of those being the VA’s Occupation Health Record-keeping System – the GAO boiled that list down to the “common factors that were critical to the success of three or more of the seven investments.”
Those are:
- Program officials were actively engaged with stakeholders
- Program staff had the necessary knowledge and skills
- Senior department and agency executives supported the programs
- End users and stakeholders were involved in the development of requirements
- End users participated in testing of system functionality prior to formal end user acceptance testing
- Government and contractor staff were stable and consistent
- Program staff prioritized requirements
- Program officials maintained regular communication with the prime contractor
- Programs received sufficient funding
In the report, titled "Critical Factors underlying successful major acquisitions," the GAO also listed its top seven projects – so judged because they “best achieved their respective cost, schedule, scope and performance goals.”
More here:
With a ridiculous testing time table, low levels of stakeholder engagement, specifications dreamt up in a vacuum I leave it as to reader exercise to score NEHTA / DoHA out of 9!
Won’t be high I suspect.
David.
