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United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO: 

Report to Congressional Committees: 

July 2011: 

USDA Systems Modernization: 

Management and Oversight Improvements Are Needed: 

GAO-11-586: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-11-586, a report to congressional committees. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service 
Agency (FSA) is responsible for administering billions of dollars 
annually in program benefits to farmers and ranchers. Since 2004, FSA 
has been planning to modernize its information technology (IT) systems 
that process these benefits with the Modernize and Innovate the 
Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) program. 

GAO was asked to determine (1) the scope and status of MIDAS, (2) 
whether MIDAS has appropriate program management, and (3) whether 
MIDAS has appropriate executive oversight and governance. To do so, 
GAO reviewed relevant department guidance and program documents and 
interviewed USDA officials. 

What GAO Found: 

FSA plans to modernize the systems supporting its 37 farm programs 
with MIDAS. The implementation cost estimate is approximately $305 
million, with a life cycle cost of approximately $473 million. 
However, the implementation cost estimate is uncertain because it has 
not been updated since 2007 and does not include cost elements that 
have since been identified, such as the selection of a commercial 
enterprise resource planning product. Following completion of its 
initial phase of program planning in October 2010, MIDAS entered its 
second of four phases—proof of concept and system design. However, the 
schedule for this phase, which was to be completed in October 2011, is 
now uncertain. While FSA officials report that the proof of concept 
activities are proceeding as scheduled, they have delayed a 
requirements review milestone until December 2011 and have not yet set 
a new date for the design review. As a result, the completion date for 
the second phase and its impact on subsequent phases is uncertain. FSA 
officials plan to revisit the cost and schedule estimates after 
completing requirements definition. 

FSA’s program management approach includes many leading practices, but 
could be strengthened. For example, prior to the proof of concept and 
system design phase, plans were in place for organizational change and 
communication, requirements management, and risk. However, a few 
practices were either partially addressed or not addressed at all in 
program plans or in the implementation of those plans. For example, an 
integrated team has not yet been formed with representatives from IT 
programs that MIDAS depends on for its success. Moreover, the plans do 
not explicitly call for, and FSA has not produced, a schedule that 
reflects dependencies with those programs, and risks are not being 
regularly tracked as planned. FSA’s uneven adoption of leading 
practices is likely to limit the agency’s effectiveness in managing 
system development, and thus its ability to deliver system 
capabilities on time and within budget. 

Executive-level governance for MIDAS has not been clearly defined and 
does not fully follow department IT investment management guidance. 
Specifically, oversight and governance has been assigned to several 
department and agency bodies, but roles and escalation criteria are 
not clearly defined among them. Department officials reported that 
department guidance is being followed for monthly status reviews, but 
not for department-level reviews at key decision points. The lack of 
clarity and definition for the roles of the governance bodies could 
result in duplication or voids in program oversight, as well as wasted 
resources. Moreover, because MIDAS is not being governed according to 
the department’s investment guidance, the department may not be 
rigorously monitoring and managing the program and its risks, and may 
not have the information it needs to make timely and appropriate 
decisions to ensure the success of MIDAS. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO is recommending that USDA update cost and schedule estimates, 
address management weaknesses in plans and program execution, and 
clarify the roles and coordination among governance bodies. USDA 
agreed with GAO’s recommendations and described plans to address them. 

View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-586] or key 
components. For more information, contact David A. Powner at (202) 512-
9286 or pownerd@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

MIDAS Is Currently Being Defined; Cost and Schedule Estimates Are 
Uncertain: 

MIDAS Plans Reflect Many Leading Management Practices, but Could Be 
Strengthened: 

MIDAS Governance Is Not Clearly Defined and Does Not Follow Department 
Investment Guidance: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments: 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

Appendix II: MIDAS Farm Programs: 

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Agriculture: 

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Tables: 

Table 1: MIDAS Supporting Contracts: 

Table 2: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Planning and 
Monitoring Practices: 

Table 3: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Requirements 
Management Practices: 

Table 4: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Contract Management 
Practices: 

Table 5: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Risk Management 
Practices: 

Table 6: MIDAS Oversight and Governance Bodies: 

Figures: 

Figure 1: MIDAS Timeline: 

Figure 2: Current and Proposed MIDAS Environments: 

Figure 3: Implementation Schedule for MIDAS: 

Abbreviations: 

CMMI: Capability Maturity Model Integration: 

CIO: chief information officer: 

FSA: Farm Service Agency: 

IT: information technology: 

MIDAS: Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems: 

OMB: Office of Management and Budget: 

USDA: United States Department of Agriculture: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

July 20, 2011: 

The Honorable Debbie Stabenow: 
Chair: 
The Honorable Pat Roberts: 
Ranking Member: 
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry: 
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Herb Kohl: 
Chairman: 
The Honorable Roy Blunt: 
Ranking Member: 
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug 
Administration, and Related Agencies: 
Committee on Appropriations: 
United States Senate: 

The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Farm Service 
Agency (FSA) is responsible for administering billions of dollars 
annually in program benefits to farmers and ranchers.[Footnote 1] 
Since 2004, FSA has been planning a program called Modernize and 
Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) to modernize the 
information technology (IT) systems that process these benefits. Goals 
include replacing aging computer hardware and revamping complex and 
duplicative farm program benefits processing by 2014. The estimated 
life cycle costs for the program are expected to approach half a 
billion dollars. 

This report responds to your request that we review the progress of 
FSA's modernization program. Specifically, you asked us to determine 
(1) the scope and status of MIDAS, (2) whether MIDAS has appropriate 
program management, and (3) whether MIDAS has appropriate executive 
oversight and governance. 

To describe the program's scope and status, we reviewed program 
documents and interviewed agency officials to identify the farm 
programs, interfaces, and systems; the milestones and products planned 
and delivered; and the costs budgeted and expended. To assess whether 
there is appropriate program management, we compared program plans and 
artifacts with leading practices for program planning and monitoring, 
requirements management, contract management, and risk management to 
determine the extent to which practices were planned and executed. To 
assess whether there is appropriate executive oversight and 
governance, we compared USDA and FSA policies, plans, and artifacts 
for MIDAS oversight and governance with our guidance and that of the 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to determine whether this 
guidance has been applied. 

We conducted this performance audit from October 2010 to July 2011 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. See appendix I 
for a complete description of our objectives, scope, and methodology. 

Background: 

USDA manages and administers benefits programs that support farm and 
ranch production, natural resources and environmental conservation, 
and rural development. FSA is one of three USDA service center 
agencies that manages and administers these benefits to farmers and 
ranchers.[Footnote 2] FSA has three core program areas: farm programs, 
farm loan programs, and commodity operations. 

The largest of the program areas--farm programs--pays billions of 
dollars annually to approximately 2 million farmers and ranchers. As 
of November 2008, FSA reported that these five farm programs accounted 
for 95 percent of FSA's budget and transactions. 

* Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payments Program: offsets losses for a 
drop in the market price for a specific crop. 

* Marketing Assistance Loan Program: provides interim financing to 
meet cash flow needs when market prices for commodities are at harvest 
time lows. 

* Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program: provides aid for 
uninsured crops that are destroyed through natural disasters. 

* Crop Disaster Program:[Footnote 3] provides benefits for crop 
production or quality losses during the crop year. 

* Conservation Reserve Program: provides incentive payments and cost 
sharing for projects to reduce erosion, protect streams and rivers, 
enhance wildlife habitats, and improve air quality. 

FSA administers these programs primarily at its approximately 2,300 
local offices using a variety of computing environments and software 
applications to process farm program data, including: 

* a central "Web farm," consisting of an array of interconnected 
computer servers that exchange data in support of data storage and Web-
based applications;[Footnote 4] 

* a central IBM mainframe that hosts non-Web applications and data; 
and: 

* a distributed network of IBM Application System 400 computers and a 
common computing environment[Footnote 5] of personal and server 
computers at each local office. 

We, FSA, and others have reported challenges with the current systems 
used to deliver benefits.[Footnote 6] Specifically, FSA's information 
systems: 

* date to the 1980s and are obsolete and difficult to maintain. The 
maintenance contract on a key component--the Application System 400 
computer--expires in 2013, and FSA anticipates that the contract will 
be difficult to renew. 

* provide farmers and ranchers with limited access to farm programs 
through the Internet, so they must primarily visit a local office to 
conduct transactions. 

* are not interoperable. FSA personnel at the local offices must 
switch between applications hosted on each system. In addition, the 
Application System 400 computers can only store customer information 
at a local office. Therefore, customers cannot use different offices 
to complete their transactions. 

* do not satisfy federal directives for internal controls and security. 

* are difficult to modify or change, hampering FSA's ability to 
promptly implement new benefits programs.[Footnote 7] 

Goals and History of MIDAS: 

In early 2004, FSA began planning the MIDAS program to streamline and 
automate farm program processes and to replace obsolete hardware and 
software. FSA identified these goals for the program: 

* Replace aging hardware: Replace the Application System 400 computers 
with a hosting infrastructure to meet business needs, internal 
controls, and security requirements. 

* Reengineer business processes: Streamline outmoded work processes by 
employing common functions across farm programs. For example, 
determining benefits eligibility might be redesigned (using business 
process reengineering) as a structured series of work steps that would 
remain consistent regardless of the benefits requested. 

* Improve data management: Make data more readily available to FSA 
personnel and farmers and ranchers--including self-service 
capabilities--and increase data accuracy and security. 

* Improve interoperability with other USDA and FSA systems: Integrate 
with other USDA and FSA modernization initiatives, including the 
Financial Management Modernization Initiative for core financial 
services that meet federal accounting and systems standards, the 
Geospatial Information Systems to obtain farm imagery and mapping 
information, and the Enterprise Data Warehouse to provide enterprise 
reporting. 

FSA drafted initial requirements for MIDAS in January 2004. It halted 
requirements development when program officials decided that the 
proposed customized solution would not meet future business needs. FSA 
subsequently changed its approach in the summer of 2006 from 
customized software to commercial off-the-shelf enterprise resource 
planning[Footnote 8] software. 

In February 2008, FSA analyzed how its farm program functions would 
map to functions available in an off-the-shelf enterprise resource 
planning software suite from vendor SAP, which was selected for two 
other USDA modernization initiatives--the Financial Management 
Modernization Initiative and the Web Based Supply Chain Management 
program. This analysis concluded that MIDAS processes generally mapped 
to the SAP software. Based on that analysis and a software 
alternatives analysis, FSA decided to proceed with SAP Enterprise 
Resource Planning as the solution for MIDAS. FSA also decided to 
accelerate the time frame for implementing the solution from the 10 
years originally planned to 2 years for its 2008 business case. To 
accomplish this, FSA would compress the requirements analysis phase 
from 4 years to 5 months, and reduce the analysis and design phase 
from 3½ years to 9 months. 

In preparation for issuing a request for quotation and selecting a 
contractor to define, design, and implement MIDAS with the SAP 
software suite, FSA staff visited local offices to document farm 
program business processes and to determine requirements for the new 
system. The request for quotation for the MIDAS system integrator 
contract was released in July 2009; a contract based on this request 
was awarded to SRA International in December 2009. The contract start 
was delayed due to a bid protest, which was resolved in February 2010, 
and SRA International began work in May 2010. By this point, FSA had 
also awarded six other contracts for services to support additional 
aspects of this initiative, including software licenses, project 
management support, and technical support. 

FSA hired a MIDAS executive program manager in September 2007 and 
drafted a staffing plan in April 2009 that called for 35 to 40 full- 
time government employees to oversee the program and its supporting 
contracts. The program office reports to the FSA Chief Information 
Officer (CIO) and has three functional areas: requirements and project 
management, IT solutions, and change management and communications. 
The USDA CIO is responsible for MIDAS investment guidance and 
direction. 

Figure 1 depicts a timeline of key milestones for MIDAS from its 
inception through the initiation of work by the system integrator. 

Figure 1: MIDAS Timeline: 

[Refer to PDF for image: timeline] 

2004: 
MIDAS initiative started. 

2004-2005: 
Initial requirements development. 

2006: 
Work stopped. 

2006: 
Solution changed to enterprise resource planning. 

2008: 
Enterprise resource planning functional analysis reported. 

2008: 
Business process analysis documented. 

2009: 
MIDAS system integrator request for quotation released. 

2009: 
System integrator contract awarded and bid protest filed. 

2010: 
Bid protest resolved. 

2010: 
System integrator began work. 

Source: GAO analysis of agency data. 

[End of figure] 

In view of congressional concern about the complexity, scale, and 
challenges of FSA's IT modernization, USDA has been required to report 
to the committees on Agriculture and Appropriations of the Senate and 
House of Representatives on key aspects of MIDAS management, including 
cost, schedule and milestones, oversight and investment management, 
and integration with other modernization initiatives.[Footnote 9] In 
response, USDA has submitted a series of reports to Congress[Footnote 
10] that reflect the department's approach toward the modernization 
program and its progress. 

Prior GAO Review Found That Program Cost and Schedule Estimates Were 
Inadequate: 

In May 2008, at the request of the House and Senate Committees on 
Appropriations, we reported[Footnote 11] that MIDAS was in the 
planning phase and that FSA had begun gathering information and 
analyzing products to integrate its existing systems.[Footnote 12] We 
determined that the agency had not adequately assessed the program's 
cost estimate, in that the estimate had been based on an unrelated 
USDA IT investment. Moreover, the agency had not adequately assessed 
its schedule estimate because business requirements had not been 
considered when FSA reduced the implementation time frame from 10 
years to 2 years. As a result, we said that it was uncertain whether 
the department could deliver the program within the cost and schedule 
time frames it had proposed and recommended that FSA establish 
effective and reliable cost estimates using industry leading practices 
and establish a realistic and reliable implementation schedule that 
was based on complete business requirements. The department generally 
agreed with our recommendations. 

Leading Practices for IT Modernization Management: 

Effective planning and management practices are essential for the 
success of large, complex IT modernization efforts. Our reviews 
[Footnote 13] of these practices and experience with federal agencies 
have shown that such practices can significantly increase the 
likelihood of delivering promised system capabilities on time and 
within budget. Organizations such as the Software Engineering 
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University have issued guidance[Footnote 
14] on effective planning and management practices for developing and 
acquiring software-based systems. These practices include: 

* Project planning and monitoring: Project planning establishes a 
framework for managing the project by defining project activities and 
their estimated cost and schedule, among other things. Project 
monitoring provides an understanding of the project's progress, so 
that appropriate corrective actions can be taken if performance 
deviates from plans. Effective planning and monitoring employ a range 
of resources and tools that promote coordination of and insight into 
the project's activities, such as an integrated project schedule, 
which identifies a project's dependencies with other projects to 
facilitate coordination of their tasks and resources. 

* Requirements management: Requirements establish what the system is 
to do, how well it is to do it, and how it is to interact with other 
systems. Effective management of requirements involves assigning 
responsibility for them, tracking them, and controlling requirements 
changes over the course of the project. It also ensures that 
requirements are validated against user needs and that each 
requirement traces back to the business need and forward to its design 
and testing. 

* Contract management: Effective contract management ensures that 
contractor activities are performed in accordance with contractual 
requirements and that the acquiring organization has sufficient 
visibility into the contractor's performance to identify and respond 
to performance shortfalls. It also ensures that the roles of multiple 
contractors are clearly defined in a contract management plan, thus 
avoiding confusion or duplication of effort in managing the tasks. 

* Risk management: Risk management is a process for anticipating 
problems and taking appropriate steps to mitigate risks and minimize 
their impact on project commitments. It involves identifying and 
cataloging the risks, categorizing them based on their estimated 
impact, prioritizing them, developing risk mitigation strategies, and 
tracking progress in executing the strategies. 

For projects such as MIDAS, which involve complex and concurrent 
activities, it is important that proven practices be implemented early 
in the life of the project so that potential problems can be 
identified and addressed before they can significantly impact program 
commitments. 

Federal guidance,[Footnote 15] along with our framework for managing 
IT investments and our prior reviews of federal investments[Footnote 
16] also point to the importance of having executive-level oversight 
and governance for the success of large IT investments. Executive 
attention helps to ensure that such projects follow sound business 
practices for planning, acquiring, and operating the IT system; meet 
cost, schedule, and performance goals; and detect and address risks 
and problems that could impede progress toward those goals. When 
multiple oversight boards govern an investment, it is critical to 
define the roles and coordination among them to avoid duplication of 
effort and to increase the effectiveness of the oversight. To help 
institutionalize such oversight, OMB requires capital planning and 
investment control processes, including a department-level board with 
the authority to commit resources and make decisions for IT 
investments. Such boards are to review the investments at key decision 
points against standard evaluation factors. OMB also requires annual 
and monthly reporting for such investments.[Footnote 17] Due to its 
concerns that investment review boards have not always been effective, 
OMB recently identified additional actions agencies should take to 
strengthen the boards, including improving the timeliness and accuracy 
of program data available to them.[Footnote 18] 

MIDAS Is Currently Being Defined; Cost and Schedule Estimates Are 
Uncertain: 

FSA plans to modernize all the systems that support its 37 farm 
programs (listed in appendix II) with the MIDAS program. The 
implementation cost estimate is approximately $305 million, with a 
life cycle cost of approximately $473 million. However, the 
implementation cost is uncertain because it has not been updated since 
2007 and does not include key cost elements. MIDAS is in its second of 
four phases--proof of concept and system design. However, the schedule 
for the current program phase, which was to be completed in October 
2011, is uncertain, and a key milestone, requirements review, is 
delayed. As a result, the completion date for the second phase, and 
its impact on subsequent phases, is unknown. FSA officials plan to 
revisit the cost and schedule estimates after completing requirements 
definition. 

Program Scope Is Generally Defined, but Is Not Reflected in Outdated 
Cost Estimate: 

As currently defined, the scope of MIDAS includes modernization of 
FSA's systems for all of its 37 farm programs (listed in appendix II). 
The modernization effort is to address all of the goals of MIDAS: 
replace aging hardware; reengineer business processes across all the 
farm programs; improve data access, accuracy, and security; and 
provide interoperability with the financial management, geospatial, 
and enterprise data initiatives. Figure 2 conceptually depicts the 
proposed systems, components, and interconnections, in contrast with 
those currently used to deliver farm program benefits. 

Figure 2: Current and Proposed MIDAS Environments: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Current: 

Farmer/rancher on home computer: 
Internet connection to: 
FSA Processing Centers (limited access). 

USDA Network: 
* One of 2,300 FSA local offices: 
- Geospatial Information System; 
- Common Computing Environment; 
- IBM Application System 400 computer; 
* FSA Processing Centers: 
- Web farm; 
- IBM mainframe. 

Proposed: 

Farmer/rancher on home computer: 
Internet connection to: 
FSA Processing Centers: 
External portal; 
Internal portal: 
* MIDAS (SAP); 
* Web farm; 
- Financial Management Modernization Initiative (SAP); 
- Geospatial Information System; 
- Enterprise Data Warehouse. 

USDA Network: 
One of 2,300 FSA local offices: 
* Common Computing Environment; 
FSA Processing Centers: 
External portal; 
Internal portal: 
* MIDAS (SAP); 
* Web farm; 
- Financial Management Modernization Initiative (SAP); 
- Geospatial Information System; 
- Enterprise Data Warehouse. 

Source: GAO analysis of USDA data. 

[End of figure] 

The program's estimated life cycle cost is approximately $473 million, 
with approximately $305 million for program planning, requirements 
definition, system design and development, deployment, and program 
support through 2014. FSA considers the implementation cost estimate-- 
which was developed in 2007 and is the most current available--to be 
preliminary, with a large degree of uncertainty.[Footnote 19] 

FSA officials reported that approximately $66 million has been 
obligated for the program from fiscal year 2009 to June 2011,[Footnote 
20] $61 million of which has been obligated for seven contracts that 
supported MIDAS during our review.[Footnote 21] Approximately $36 
million has been obligated for the system integrator contract, which 
is to provide planning, development, design, and deployment. 
Approximately $25 million has been obligated for the remaining six 
contracts, which are to provide project management support, 
development, independent verification and validation, software 
licenses, and hosting infrastructure. Table 1 describes these 
contracts. 

Table 1: MIDAS Supporting Contracts: 

Program management: 

Contract: Project management support[A]; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $3.5 million; 
Scope: Supports MIDAS program office with project control, acquisition 
development, risk management, budget and finance, and overall project 
management. 

Contract: Enterprise project management office; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $6.3 million; 
Scope: Supports enterprise governance including planning, control 
reporting and communication, and some project-level process definition 
and reporting. 

Development: 

Contract: Lean Six Sigma business process mapping[A]; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $3.5 million; 
Scope: Supports the MIDAS office to improve business processes and 
develop and maintain MIDAS requirements. 

Independent verification and validation: 

Contract: Independent verification and validation; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $4.9 million; 
Scope: Independent oversight and review of the system integrator's 
deliverables and methodology. 

Software and infrastructure: 

Contract: SAP software licenses/contracts; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $3.5 million; 
Scope: Software licenses to support the development and operation of 
MIDAS. 

Contract: Hosting services; 
Obligations FY09 to June 2011: $3.3 million; 
Scope: Infrastructure needed to run the MIDAS system. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[A] In July 2011, an FSA official said that these had expired. 

[End of table] 

FSA officials stated that they have not revised the 2007 cost estimate 
because the scope of MIDAS has not changed. However, FSA's cost 
estimate for MIDAS does not reflect costs resulting from program 
changes identified since 2007, such as: 

* selection of SAP as the enterprise resource planning software and 
mechanism for enterprise reporting; 

* workshops held with stakeholders in 2010 to identify business 
processes; and: 

* deployment of the financial management initiative and planned 
integration with the geospatial and enterprise data initiatives. 

In addition, estimated costs have not been included for modernizing 
program processes that cannot be supported with the SAP software, or 
for implementing any new farm program requirements that may be enacted 
in the 2012 farm bill. 

In April 2011, FSA officials stated that they would begin revising the 
program's cost estimate in September 2011 and would incorporate new 
information gained from requirements development.[Footnote 22] 
However, they could not provide a date for completing the revised 
estimate because this information was still being identified. 

Design Milestones Have Slipped; Program Schedule Is Uncertain: 

MIDAS is to be executed in four phases with incremental deployment of 
system capabilities, as recommended by OMB.[Footnote 23] FSA calls 
these four phases planning, proof of concept and system design, 
initial operating capability, and full operating capability. These 
phases were to run from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014, as 
shown in figure 3.[Footnote 24] FSA completed the program planning 
phase in October 2010. 

Figure 3: Implementation Schedule for MIDAS: 

[Refer to PDF for image: illustration] 

Planning (completed): 
Last two quarters of FY 2010. 

Proof of concept and system design: (1 farm program demo)
First quarter FY 2011 through: Completion date not provided. 

Initial operating capability: (1 farm program operational); 
Fourth quarter FY 2011 through first quarter FY 2013. 

Full operating capability: (36 farm programs operational): 
Fourth quarter FY 2012 through second quarter FY 2014. 

Source: GAO analysis of agency data. 

[End of figure] 

In April 2011, FSA officials reported that the second phase was under 
way and that the proof of concept demonstration was on schedule, but 
that key milestones for system design would not be completed as 
scheduled. FSA officials could not provide new completion dates for 
the system design milestones or the second phase. They stated that an 
update to the schedule, due in September 2011, would also not be 
completed as planned because information needed to revise the schedule 
is being identified as the second phase progresses. This uncertainty 
has implications for the remaining phases, as discussed in the 
following sections. 

Project planning. This phase began in May 2010 and was completed in 
October 2010--1 month later than planned due to FSA's requirement that 
the system integrator address deficiencies in its planning 
deliverables. During this phase, the system integrator developed--and 
FSA approved--planning documents that define and detail the management 
of processes, products, activities, and milestones for the succeeding 
phases of MIDAS, including a project plan, concept of operations, SAP 
implementation road map, technical development approach, 
organizational change management strategy, and data management plan. 
FSA also established a federal program office for MIDAS and filled 
most program office positions, including key management positions for 
the program director and deputy directors for requirements and project 
management, IT solutions, and change management/communications. 

Proof of concept and system design. This phase, begun in November 
2010, was scheduled to be completed in October 2011. The proof of 
concept is to demonstrate several functions of one farm program--the 
Marketing Assistance Loan farm program--with an interface to 
geospatial systems. This demonstration is to use SAP software in a 
stand-alone (i.e., not production) environment and is to validate 
certain SAP software functions. An FSA official stated that the first 
proof of concept demonstration was conducted in May 2011 and that 
field demonstrations are to be conducted through August 2011. 

The system design portion of this phase entails three efforts--
defining requirements, allocating requirements to systems, and 
designing system functions. To define requirements, FSA is analyzing 
the 37 farm programs to identify the required business processes, 
including the steps, tasks, and data currently used for these 
programs. These processes are also being re-engineered or optimized by 
aligning them with nine common processes where possible.[Footnote 25] 
Tasks that do not align with common processes will be identified as 
program-specific processes. Both common and program-specific business 
processes are to be captured and baselined as requirements. Technical 
requirements are to be defined in conjunction with business 
requirements and will specify computer processing power, data storage, 
network bandwidth, and computer upgrades to support the processing of 
MIDAS functions, among other needs. They are also to address 
modernization goals, including consolidation of farm program 
processing to two existing computing centers, eliminating the obsolete 
computers in the local offices; allowing internal and external access 
to MIDAS through Web portals; and integrating MIDAS with the other 
USDA and FSA modernization initiatives. 

Following requirements definition, FSA plans to conduct an allocation 
analysis to determine which business requirements can be supported by 
the SAP software. Requirements that cannot be implemented using the 
SAP software are to be allocated to the Web farm for implementation. A 
high-level design of the MIDAS solution, to include both SAP and Web 
farm (non-SAP) system functions, will be based on this requirements 
allocation. 

In April 2011, FSA officials stated that two key system design 
milestones--the system requirements review and the high-level design 
review--would not be held as scheduled. According to the December 2010 
program schedule, milestones for these events were originally 
scheduled for May 2011 and July 2011, respectively. However, FSA 
officials do not plan to conduct the system requirements review until 
December 2011, and a new date for the high-level design review has not 
yet been set because additional information and analysis are needed to 
plan this milestone. As a result, the completion date for the second 
phase is uncertain. 

Initial operating capability. This phase was to be conducted from July 
2011 to December 2012--a schedule that has not yet been updated to 
reflect delays in the second phase. The initial activities of this 
phase are to run concurrently with the proof of concept and system 
design phase. Detailed requirements are to be defined for the 
Marketing Assistance Loan farm program, including required interfaces, 
computers, data storage, and networks. Plans call for augmenting the 
high-level system design to reflect these requirements, implementing 
the design for modernized Marketing Assistance Loan operations, and 
deploying it to all local offices. 

Full operating capability. This phase, scheduled from September 2012 
to March 2014, is to include detailed requirements definition, design, 
and deployment for the 36 remaining farm programs and for farmer and 
rancher access to farm program services from their own computers. The 
schedule for this phase has also not been updated to reflect delays in 
the proof of concept and system design phase. 

MIDAS Plans Reflect Many Leading Management Practices, but Could Be 
Strengthened: 

Delivering large IT modernization programs such as MIDAS on time and 
within budget presents challenges and risks. Program goals are more 
likely to be achieved when managers employ leading practices for 
managing program planning and monitoring, requirements, contracts, and 
risks. Prior to the proof of concept and system design phase, MIDAS 
plans were in place and managers were assigned for these practices. 
These plans largely incorporated certain leading practices, although 
each management area had at least one practice that was not fully 
satisfied. 

Program Planning and Monitoring Are Partially Defined; Implementation 
Is Incomplete: 

The success of complex IT modernization initiatives such as MIDAS, 
which involve transforming business processes and integrating with 
other systems, requires effective program planning and monitoring to 
ensure that the intended results are achieved. The Software 
Engineering Institute, our work,[Footnote 26] and recent OMB guidance 
[Footnote 27] have identified leading practices that support effective 
planning and monitoring to include: 

* assigning a full-time project manager and committed business sponsor 
to guide the program; 

* planning organizational change and communications management to 
obtain user acceptance of new ways of doing business;[Footnote 28] 

* establishing integrated project teams with external stakeholders and 
subject matter experts to facilitate coordination of project 
activities; 

* developing integrated project schedules to identify external 
dependencies among tasks and resources; 

* defining earned value management that is compliant with relevant 
guidelines[Footnote 29] to manage contractor and project office 
development work; and: 

* tracking and reporting the status of key program milestones--such as 
through OMB's IT investment business case (known as the exhibit 300) 
and program status reports on OMB's IT investment Web site (known as 
the IT Dashboard).[Footnote 30] 

Of these six practices, FSA has satisfied three, partially satisfied 
two, and not satisfied one (see table 2). Specifically, FSA has 
assigned a program manager and a business sponsor, has planned and 
initiated organizational change and communications management, and 
planned for earned value management. However, it has not yet 
established an integrated project team that formally commits the 
support of IT programs related to the project, developed an integrated 
project schedule that specifies related IT program dependencies, or 
reported clearly on key MIDAS milestones to accurately convey program 
progress. 

Table 2: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Planning and 
Monitoring Practices: 

Leading practice: Assign a program manager and business sponsor; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: As of October 2010, a full-time director and a 
business sponsor had been assigned. These roles are defined in the 
project management plan and charter. The business sponsor for MIDAS is 
the FSA Administrator. 

Leading practice: Plan organizational change and communications 
management; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The organizational change and communications 
plans call for stakeholder engagement, communications, organizational 
readiness, and training to facilitate program acceptance and to 
specify activities for these four areas. Plans also define the roles 
of the organization change and communications managers and call for 
monitoring and managing activities from design through deployment. FSA 
has assigned a manager for organizational change and communications 
and reported that it had established an enterprisewide modernization 
communications team; completed the initial phase of stakeholder 
analysis for an enterprisewide communications plan; conducted FSA 
staff training in development techniques; and had developed a Web 
site, newsletter, and brochure about the program, among other things. 

Leading practice: Establish an integrated project team; 
Partially satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The system integrator's project management plan 
calls for establishing an integrated project team comprised of FSA and 
contractor staff from MIDAS and other FSA modernization initiatives to 
facilitate external integration, interfacing, and dependencies with 
other projects, such as the financial management and geospatial 
initiatives. Even though the FSA CIO stated that he has been able to 
obtain staff to support MIDAS as needed, a chartered project team 
would better ensure that needed staff will continue to be available in 
the future. When we discussed this with FSA officials, they agreed 
that a chartered team would be helpful. As of April 2011, however, FSA 
had not chartered such a team. 

Leading practice: Establish an integrated project schedule to identify 
external dependencies; 
Not satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: Plans do not call for an integrated schedule 
that identifies external dependencies with the financial management, 
geospatial, and enterprise data initiatives, nor have these 
dependencies been incorporated into the program's schedules. Instead, 
FSA's documented schedule only includes tasks and dependencies within 
the program office. The inventory of program risks from November 2010 
noted the need for integrated scheduling with other modernization 
initiatives and, at that time, FSA's CIO said that such a schedule was 
being developed. In March 2011, an FSA official provided a separate 
high-level schedule that identified dependent milestones between MIDAS 
and these initiatives, but it did not include the tasks that 
contributed to the dependencies or the associated resource commitments 
or contention. An FSA briefing in April 2011 noted that weak 
integration planning could result in inefficient use of funding, 
inability to properly scope the work, and unmet stakeholder 
expectations. 

Leading practice: Define earned value management; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: Plans require the program to comply with 
relevant guidance for earned value management. The project management 
plan describes the earned value standards to be followed and requires 
establishing a program baseline; 
updating task performance, cost, and schedule status monthly; 
and comparing these monthly status updates to the approved baseline. 
Plans also require assigned staff to review all earned value 
management reports from contractors. Program office positions 
responsible for reviewing earned value management reports were 
staffed. (Contractor compliance requirements for earned value 
management are also discussed in the section on contract management 
practices). 

Leading practice: Track and report the status of key milestones; 
Partially satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: Plans call for identifying, evaluating, and 
tracking program milestones, and USDA requires that programs report 
progress against milestones to the department on a monthly basis. 
MIDAS reported its progress against program milestones on the IT 
Dashboard in February 2011 and in its 2012 business case. However, the 
system blueprint milestone, reported as planned for completion in 
September 2011, is only one of several system blueprint milestones, 
and the others are not shown on the program schedule. Unless all the 
blueprinting milestones are depicted on the schedule and progress is 
presented for each increment, the current milestone will incorrectly 
convey that all system blueprinting is to be completed in 2011, rather 
than in 2014, as planned. FSA officials acknowledged that this 
blueprinting milestone could be misleading. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[End of table] 

Without a committed integrated project team and an integrated project 
schedule that identifies MIDAS dependencies on initiatives outside the 
program office, the program may not obtain necessary and timely staff 
participation, expertise, and resources, and may not be able to 
adequately monitor integration with these initiatives. 

Without clear milestone reporting, Congress, OMB, department and 
agency management, and other interested parties will have difficulty 
tracking the delivery of MIDAS capabilities. 

Requirements Management Is Defined, but User Concerns Need to Be Fully 
Validated: 

Defining and implementing disciplined processes for developing and 
managing the requirements for a new system can help improve the 
likelihood that the system will meet user needs and that it will 
perform or function as intended. Leading practices for requirements 
development and management[Footnote 31] include, among other things, 

* establishing a policy for developing and managing requirements; 

* assigning and defining the role and responsibilities for a 
requirements manager; 

* eliciting and validating user needs; 

* defining a disciplined change control process; and: 

* ensuring that system requirements are traceable back to business 
requirements and forward to detailed requirements, design, and test 
cases. 

FSA fully satisfied four of these practices, and partially satisfied 
one (see table 3). MIDAS requirements and change management plans 
address all of these leading practices. However, one practice--the 
validation of user needs--was not fully satisfied due to incomplete 
validation of user needs (called "pain points") that had been 
identified prior to the award of the system integrator contract. 

Table 3: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Requirements 
Management Practices: 

Leading practice: Establish a requirements development and management 
policy; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The requirements management plan calls for 
requirements development and management processes based on the SAP 
methodology for gathering, decomposing, and documenting requirements 
(called blueprinting); supporting systems and infrastructure (called 
landscaping); and integrating with FSA's enterprise architecture. It 
also specifies the tools that will support these processes during the 
MIDAS life cycle. 

Leading practice: Assign and define a requirements manager position; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The project management plan defines the role 
and responsibilities of the requirements manager. This position had 
been staffed as of October 2010. 

Leading practice: Elicit and validate user needs; 
Partially satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The requirements management strategy calls for 
eliciting desired or required system capabilities from users, 
validating them, translating them into system requirements, and 
obtaining approval before deployment. It specifically calls for 
eliciting system capabilities via workshops with stakeholders from all 
the farm programs. These capabilities are to be translated or 
decomposed into the baseline system-level requirements and approved by 
stakeholders at the system requirements review, validated against the 
initial design at the preliminary design review, and approved for 
implementation at a system design review. Elicitation of system 
capabilities for all FSA farm programs was conducted with stakeholders 
via workshops conducted with the systems integrator in late 2010. In 
addition to this elicitation effort, FSA previously obtained user 
requirements from field staff--referred to as "pain points"--prior to 
the systems integrator contract award.[A] Agency officials initially 
told us in December 2010 that they did not plan to validate the pain 
points against the requirements being developed through blueprinting, 
but in April 2011, they reported that the pain points were being 
tracked to MIDAS requirements. However, the mapping they provided in 
early May 2011 was incomplete, in that only 57 percent of the original 
591 pain points were represented. 

Leading practice: Define a disciplined change control process; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The requirements management and change 
management plans call for several review levels for change requests, 
including the system integrator's Engineering Review Board and Change 
Control Board, and the MIDAS Change Control Board, which is the final 
authority in approving change requests. The reviewing parties for a 
change depend on the impact of the change. Changes are to be logged 
and tracked in an SAP tool called Solution Manager. Once changes have 
been validated in the development environment, Solution Manager is to 
be used to transport the changes to the next environment in the life 
cycle, such as test or quality assurance. 

Leading practice: Ensure that requirements trace forward and backward 
among development products; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The requirements management plan calls for 
bidirectional traceability among requirements products, both backward 
to business requirements and forward to detailed system requirements 
and test cases. The repository for this traceability, called a 
requirements traceability matrix, is a required deliverable of the 
system integrator contract in conjunction with the system requirements 
review milestone. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[A] USDA describes a "pain point" as an issue or weakness that hinders 
the progress of a process--specifically for a farm benefit program. 
Examples of these pain points include eligibility determinations that 
are not consistent and calculations on farm and crop acreage that are 
cumbersome because they require separate transactions to compute. 

[End of table] 

Unless all the concerns previously expressed by field staff as "pain 
points" are systematically validated with respect to MIDAS 
requirements and appropriately resolved by the new system or some 
other means, MIDAS may not meet user expectations and its acceptance 
by field staff may be jeopardized. 

Contract Management Is Defined, but Tasks Could Be Better Delineated 
among Contractors: 

Effective project management includes clear definition of authority, 
duties, and responsibilities among contractors, and between 
contractors and program management. According to the Software 
Engineering Institute and our prior work,[Footnote 32] effective 
processes to manage and oversee contracts that support IT projects 
include: 

* establishing and maintaining a plan for managing and overseeing the 
contracts; 

* assigning responsibility and authority for performing contract 
management and oversight; 

* identifying the contract work to be performed and the associated 
acceptance criteria; 

* conducting reviews with contractors to ensure cost and schedule 
commitments are being met and risks are being managed; and: 

* establishing processes for verifying and accepting contract 
deliverables. 

FSA fully satisfied four of these practices and partially satisfied 
one (see table 4). The system integrator contract and supporting 
documents indicate that FSA has planned to use these practices and has 
applied them in managing this contractor. In addition, the project 
management plan describes the management approach for all the 
contracts that support MIDAS, specifies responsibility for overseeing 
the contracts, and defines the process for reviewing contractor 
performance. The plan also requires that contractor deliverables and 
acceptance criteria be specified in the contracts. However, the plan 
does not clarify contractor roles for tasks supported by more than one 
contractor, and does not require that those roles be delineated in 
other program or contractor documents. Table 4 presents a detailed 
assessment of how FSA has addressed leading contract management 
practices. 

Table 4: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Contract Management 
Practices: 

Leading practice: Establish and maintain a contract management plan; 
Partially satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The project management plan describes plans for 
managing contracts. It describes the seven contracts and the contract 
management processes, including earned value management compliance and 
system integrator deliverable requirements and reviews. The plan 
references contract-specific documents for details on contract 
management processes. However, the plan, the project schedule, a 
program report, and the program's inventory of risks indicate 
instances where two contractors support the same task, with no 
clarification of their unique roles. Specifically, both the enterprise 
program management office and project management support contractors 
support project-level oversight, and both the system integrator and 
business process management contractors are to develop requirements. 
FSA officials acknowledged the instances of poorly described and 
duplicative tasks, and stated that the duplicative project management 
and business process support would expire in 2011[A]. 

Leading practice: Assign contract management responsibility and 
authority; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: FSA contract managers for each contract and for 
overall contract management are defined in the project management 
plan. All contract manager positions had been filled as of October 
2010. 

Leading practice: Identify the contract work and acceptance criteria; 
Satisfied: [B]; 
FSA plans and actions: The project management plan references standard 
operating procedures for review of all of the contract deliverables 
and describes additional reviews for system integrator work. The 
system integrator contract identifies the contract work. FSA officials 
stated that content and acceptance criteria for contract deliverables 
are further defined in deliverable descriptions. One example of a 
deliverable description we reviewed includes acceptance criteria, such 
as consistency with SAP best practices and federal records management 
laws and regulations, for the system integrator's deliverable 
"Strategy Plan to Decompose the Requirements Document.". 

Leading practice: Conduct cost, schedule, and risk reviews with 
contractors; 
Satisfied: [C]; 
FSA plans and actions: The project management plan requires that 
contractors comply with relevant earned value management guidance to 
support the monthly review of contract costs and schedule. Reviews are 
to be performed by the contracting officer's technical representative 
and at monthly program management reviews. The project management plan 
also requires that contractors comply with the risk management plan, 
which requires that contractors report risks for federal manager 
review, and it describes this reporting process. The system integrator 
contract requires compliance with relevant earned value management 
requirements. Earned value and risk are to be reported monthly. 

Leading practice: Establish processes for verifying and accepting 
deliverables; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: Project management plans define processes for 
verifying and accepting system integrator contract deliverables at a 
performance gate review and by an independent contractor. The 
September 2010 gate review of system integrator planning deliverables 
was documented. The independent review of the system integrator's 
"Strategy Plan to Decompose the Requirements Document," based on its 
deliverable description, was also documented. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[A] In July 2011, an FSA official confirmed this expiration. 

[B] Our validation was limited to the system integrator contract and 
specific deliverables. 

[C] We did not evaluate compliance with the earned value management 
guidance. 

[End of table] 

Unless program plans, schedules, and reports clearly delineate the 
work products and activities of individual contractors, program staff, 
contractors, and stakeholders may be confused about contractor 
responsibilities, which may negatively impact program deliverables or 
make it difficult to hold contractors accountable. By eliminating 
contracts with the potential for duplicate or confusing efforts, FSA 
has resolved the ambiguous roles contained in its plans and can now 
clearly present the unique roles of its contractors in updates to its 
program plans and other artifacts. 

Risk Management Is Defined and an Inventory Established, but Risks Are 
Not Regularly Tracked: 

Risk management is critical in complex IT modernization programs such 
as MIDAS to detect and address risks before they adversely impact 
project objectives. Leading practices and our prior work[Footnote 33] 
recommend: 

* establishing and documenting risk management processes in a risk 
management plan from the program's inception; 

* assigning a risk manager with the authority to oversee the plan and 
its execution; 

* defining a risk inventory, and documenting risks in it, along with 
decisions about their priority, probability of occurrence, and impact; 
and: 

* regularly tracking the status of risks and mitigation efforts and 
providing this input to project managers. 

FSA satisfied three of these practices and did not satisfy a fourth 
(see table 5). Specifically, it has defined its risk management 
processes in a risk management plan, designated a risk manager, and 
established a risk inventory. However, it has not maintained the risk 
inventory to track and report the current status of risks and 
mitigation efforts to inform MIDAS managers. 

Table 5: FSA Plans and Actions to Address Leading Risk Management 
Practices: 

Leading practice: Establish and document risk management processes in 
a plan; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The risk management plan defines processes for 
managing risk, including capturing risks in an inventory called a risk 
register, prioritizing them, determining their probability and impact, 
defining a mitigation approach, and reporting the status of the risks 
in the register. 

Leading practice: Assign a risk manager; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The risk management plan defines the role of 
the risk manager. This position had been staffed as of October 
2010.[A]. 

Leading practice: Define a risk inventory and document risks; 
Satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The risk register defined in the risk 
management plan includes risk descriptions, priority (rating), 
probability of occurrence, impact, mitigation approach (response), and 
status. The program's risk register of November 2010 was populated 
with risks and this associated information.[B] The register included 
key risks and concerns identified in MIDAS plans, oversight reviews, 
and in this report. For example, plans and oversight reviews cite 
risks with the integration of other USDA systems, the complexity of 
modernizing farm programs and converting existing data, and gaps in 
meeting farm program requirements using the commercial SAP solution, 
which were also in the risk register. In addition, the register 
includes risks associated with management practices reviewed in this 
report, such as cost and schedule estimates and user requirements 
validation. 

Leading practice: Regularly track the status of risks; 
Not satisfied; 
FSA plans and actions: The risk management plan calls for risk status 
to be updated for review at biweekly meetings. The risk register of 
January 2011, including the status of risks and risk mitigation, was 
not updated from the November 2010 version. In the risk register FSA 
provided in early May 2011, the risk identification scheme had changed 
and risk identifiers did not correspond to the same risks in the 
previous registers. As a result, we could not determine the status and 
disposition of the November risks as of the end of our review. For 
instance, risk #6 in the November register is "SAP technology hasn't 
been deployed publicly," while in the May register, risk #6 reads 
"MIDAS solution will not be able to accommodate the farm bill." 
Moreover, when risks were clearly similar in both registers, the 
status of actions to address the November mitigation strategy was not 
clearly presented in the May register. Although FSA was not tracking 
risks, the May risk register introduced new risks, some of which did 
not have responses or resolution plans documented. FSA officials 
stated that they intend to mature their risk management process to 
regularly update and track risks and to discuss them in weekly MIDAS 
status meetings. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[A] According to the MIDAS risk management plan, the risk manager is 
also the Deputy Director for Requirements and Program Management. 

[B] We did not assess whether FSA assigned the risk indicators 
according to the criteria in the risk management plan. 

[End of table] 

Identifying risks according to the MIDAS risk management plan has 
provided FSA managers with an initial understanding of the risks faced 
by the program. However, until FSA ensures that its risks have been 
consistently identified throughout the course of the program and 
regularly updates the status of its risks, it cannot ensure that it is 
effectively managing the full set of risks it faces or that progress 
is being made in mitigating the risks throughout the life cycle of 
MIDAS. 

MIDAS Governance Is Not Clearly Defined and Does Not Follow Department 
Investment Guidance: 

Oversight and governance of IT investments help to ensure that the 
investments meet cost, schedule, and performance goals. When an 
investment is governed by multiple boards or bodies, the roles and 
coordination among these bodies should be clearly defined, including 
the processes and criteria for escalating issues. In addition, we 
[Footnote 34] and OMB[Footnote 35] recommend that federal agencies 
establish an executive board, typically at the department level, to 
oversee major IT investments. This board should review investments 
against criteria at key decision points, such as investment selection. 
In addition, OMB requires departmental oversight of the business cases 
for major IT investments and monthly status updates[Footnote 36] of 
program cost, schedule, and performance information. Consistent with 
federal guidance, USDA requires an executive board to oversee major IT 
investments at key decision points and a monthly status review. 

Oversight and governance of MIDAS is the responsibility of several 
department and agency bodies. Department-level oversight is performed 
by the Senior Management Oversight Committee; the Project Management/ 
Design Decision Committee, which reports to the senior committee; and 
a proposed third body called the Modernization Review Board. In 
addition, the Modernization Program Management Review Board operates 
at the agency level. FSA has not clearly identified this board's 
position in the oversight hierarchy. Table 6 summarizes the purpose 
and meeting schedules for these bodies. 

Table 6: MIDAS Oversight and Governance Bodies: 

Body: Senior Management Oversight Committee; 
Purpose: Oversee and review MIDAS modernization progress at the USDA 
level. Review MIDAS at system integrator gates; 
Meeting schedule: monthly; 
Membership levels: USDA, FSA. 

Body: Project Management/Design Decision Committee; 
Purpose: Provide direction and decisions for MIDAS in areas such as 
meeting timelines, ensuring proper talent and skills, design 
specifications, supplementing consultants, meeting regulations, and 
meeting project goals. Manage cross-agency dependencies; 
Meeting schedule: monthly; 
Membership levels: USDA, FSA. 

Body: FSA Modernization Program Management Review Board; 
Purpose: Review the major IT initiatives within the agency and resolve 
key interdependencies from an IT perspective; 
Meeting schedule: monthly; 
Membership levels: FSA. 

Body: USDA Modernization Review Board (proposed); 
Purpose: Improve MIDAS governance in areas such as USDA enterprise 
solution management, cross-initiative architectural and technical 
integration (projects), cross-organizational architectural and 
technical integration (support groups), and technical risk management; 
Meeting schedule: not specified; 
Membership levels: USDA. 

Source: GAO analysis of FSA data. 

[End of table] 

However, the roles and coordination of these bodies are not clear in 
the following respects: 

Certain roles have been assigned to governance bodies without clear 
delineation of their scope and criteria for escalating issues. 
Charters and plans for the department Project Management/Design 
Decision Committee and the agency Modernization Program Management 
Review Board describe similar--and potentially overlapping--roles for 
overseeing agency IT initiatives. Moreover, the extent of oversight by 
the active bodies and criteria for escalating issues related to cost, 
schedule, performance, and risk have not been defined in charters or 
plans. 

A key role has not been assigned. According to the MIDAS risk 
register, the Project Management/Design Decision Committee and Senior 
Management Oversight Committee are to coordinate enterprise resource 
planning among MIDAS and other initiatives, such as financial 
management. However, this coordination role has not been described in 
charters or plans.[Footnote 37] 

The role of the proposed board has not yet been defined. FSA officials 
stated that the USDA Modernization Review Board is to improve MIDAS 
governance, but its oversight responsibilities and processes to do so 
have not yet been defined. 

These concerns have been recognized to some extent by FSA and the 
department, but remain unresolved. In October 2010, the FSA 
Modernization Program Management Review Board appeared to be aware of 
this lack of clarity and recommended that a directory of governance 
boards be developed and their respective responsibilities, decision- 
making processes, and escalation path be defined. An April 2011 
Project Management/Design Decision Committee briefing noted that the 
proposed Modernization Review Board would mitigate the risk of 
integrating MIDAS with other systems. However, as of May 2011, these 
recommended improvements had yet to be provided. 

Regarding oversight of MIDAS, none of these boards reviewed MIDAS at 
key decision points using criteria defined in department guidance. An 
official from the department's CIO office stated that the Senior 
Management Oversight Committee serves as the IT investment executive 
board recommended by OMB and required by USDA, although the 
committee's charter and other governance plans do not specify this 
role. The committee reviewed MIDAS at the planning gate in October 
2010, but did not use the department's review criteria. Instead, the 
review focused on contract deliverables and did not include project 
management office documents such as the MIDAS risk assessment and 
project management plan, as called for by department guidance. On the 
other hand, department officials reported that MIDAS has complied with 
department requirements for business case and monthly status reviews. 
A department official reported that USDA's CIO office has conducted 
monthly reviews of MIDAS status and its business case using the 
department's criteria and that the status is posted on the IT 
Dashboard.[Footnote 38] Nevertheless, the dashboard reported in 
January and March 2011 that improved oversight is needed for MIDAS. 

The lack of clarity and definition for the roles of MIDAS oversight 
and governance bodies may result in duplication or voids in program 
oversight and wasted resources. Moreover, because MIDAS is not being 
fully governed according to department investment guidance, the 
department may not be rigorously monitoring and managing the program 
and its risks, and may not have the information it needs to make 
timely and appropriate decisions to ensure the success of MIDAS. 

Conclusions: 

After years of planning, USDA is moving forward with its farm program 
modernization effort known as MIDAS, which intends to remedy long- 
standing problems with the supportability, efficiency, and accuracy of 
existing systems. The agency has made key decisions regarding the 
scope of MIDAS, the contractors that will support system design and 
development, and the incremental approach it will use to execute the 
program. However, FSA's implementation cost estimate has yet to 
reflect decisions and activities that have occurred since the estimate 
was developed in 2007. In addition, key events for the proof of 
concept and system design phase, currently under way, have been 
delayed. Consequently, agency managers are revising the plans for 
completing MIDAS requirements definition, system design, and the cost 
and schedule for the program, but are unlikely to finalize these plans 
until fiscal year 2012. Given the agency's prior difficulty with 
developing reliable cost and schedule estimates, and our corresponding 
prior recommendation, it is critical that FSA and USDA adopt a 
rigorous and credible approach for revising estimates and complete 
them in a timely manner, so that the department has a basis for 
effectively managing program progress and making decisions about 
needed adjustments. 

The challenges USDA is facing in meeting its program commitments are 
more likely to be overcome if it can adopt and execute effective 
management practices. The management framework established by the 
agency in a series of plans reflects many leading practices for 
program planning and monitoring, requirements, contracts, and risk. 
Moreover, FSA has followed through on these plans to some extent by 
staffing government managers in these areas and instituting mechanisms 
to promote use of the practices, such as contract provisions for 
earned value management. However, MIDAS management could be further 
strengthened through improved definition and execution of these and 
other leading practices, specifically by chartering and operating an 
integrated project team; fully documenting MIDAS dependencies on other 
departmental IT initiatives in an integrated project schedule; clearly 
identifying and reporting key incremental milestones to OMB; 
validating all previously identified user concerns against MIDAS 
requirements; clearly delineating contractor roles and 
responsibilities; and consistently identifying and regularly tracking 
and reporting the status of MIDAS risks. By applying its plans and 
embracing other proven management practices, FSA will stand a better 
chance of surfacing and resolving issues before they can derail the 
program. 

The agencywide impact of MIDAS and its dependence on other IT 
initiatives point to the need for clearly defined and effectively 
executed oversight. However, the roles and coordination among 
oversight bodies are not clearly defined and USDA's well-defined 
investment oversight guidance is not being fully executed. Providing 
adequate and efficient oversight for MIDAS in such an environment 
presents a challenge that could be avoided if USDA and FSA delineate 
governance roles and responsibilities and execute them accordingly. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

To increase the likelihood that the United States Department of 
Agriculture (USDA) will be able to successfully define, develop, and 
deploy the Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems 
(MIDAS) program, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct 
the chief information officers of USDA and the Farm Service Agency 
(FSA) to take the following three actions: 

* To ensure that the department can effectively oversee MIDAS cost, 
schedule, and performance commitments, FSA should: 

- develop timely cost estimates for MIDAS's remaining phases, its 
overall development and deployment, and its life cycle, to incorporate 
the program changes previously omitted and any others recently 
identified and: 

- develop complete and detailed schedules for the program's current 
and remaining phases that take into account the milestone delays from 
the program's second phase and a requirements baseline. 

* To ensure that FSA is employing leading practices for program 
planning and monitoring, requirements management, contract management, 
and risk management for MIDAS, the agency should: 

- charter and operate an integrated project team that commits 
stakeholders to the program from other USDA information technology 
(IT) initiatives; 

- establish an integrated project schedule that identifies tasks, 
dependencies, and resource commitments and contention between MIDAS 
and other department IT initiatives; 

- clearly track key milestones, and report their status in the 
program's business case and on the Office of Management and Budget's 
IT Dashboard; 

- validate all of the 591 user pain points against the requirements 
and document the results of this validation, including points that 
will not be addressed by MIDAS; 

- update the program's management plans to clearly delineate the roles 
and responsibilities of contractors assigned to the same tasks; and: 

- document the status of resolved and unresolved risks initially 
identified in November 2010, identify and maintain any unresolved 
risks from that period in the current risk register, and regularly 
track risks and update the risk register according to the program's 
risk management plan. 

* To ensure the effectiveness of MIDAS oversight and the efficiency of 
its governance bodies, the department and agency should collaborate to: 

- delineate the roles and responsibilities of the governance bodies 
and clarify coordination among them, to include criteria for 
escalating issues and: 

- document how the department is meeting its policy for IT investment 
management for MIDAS, to include investment reviews. 

Agency Comments: 

In written comments on a draft of this report signed by the 
Administrator, Farm Service Agency, and reprinted in appendix III, 
USDA generally agreed with the content and recommendations and 
described actions and time frames to address the recommendations. For 
example, the department stated that it will revise MIDAS schedule and 
cost estimates for this year's capital planning submission based on 
fiscal year 2011 planning, requirements, and design sessions, and will 
be able to develop more precise estimates at the completion of primary 
blueprinting and design in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012. The 
department described improvements to address our other 
recommendations, including integration processes with other 
initiatives; requirements validation; risk management; and department-
level governance, to be completed by the end of the second quarter of 
fiscal year 2012. 

We are sending copies of this report to interested congressional 
committees, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the 
Secretary of Agriculture, and the Administrator of the Farm Service 
Agency. In addition, this report will be available at no charge on the 
GAO Web site at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov]. 

If you or your staffs have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at (202) 512-9286 or at pownerd@gao.gov. Contact points for 
our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found 
on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this report are 
listed in appendix IV. 

Signed by: 

David A. Powner: 
Director, Information Technology Management Issues: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology: 

Our objectives were to determine (1) the scope and status of the 
Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) 
program; (2) whether MIDAS has appropriate program management; and (3) 
whether MIDAS has appropriate executive oversight and governance. 

To determine the program's scope and status, we reviewed planning 
documents to identify the farm programs included in MIDAS, the 
required interfaces to other United States Department of Agriculture 
(USDA) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) modernization initiatives, and 
the proposed technical approach to the program. We also reviewed the 
fiscal year 2012 business case (called the exhibit 300), program 
schedules, oversight reviews from October 2010, and a 2010 FSA report 
to Congress to identify the active contracts supporting MIDAS and to 
determine the program's phases, due dates, and phase completion 
status. To determine whether FSA completed the planning phase as 
scheduled, we identified the deviation between the planned and actual 
completion dates. We also examined selected products produced during 
that phase. We identified the cost estimate and its limitations using 
these sources and a 2009 third-party report to Congress on FSA 
modernization. We interviewed USDA and FSA officials to clarify 
information in the documents we reviewed and to more fully understand 
the program's progress and status. 

To determine whether MIDAS has appropriate program management, we 
identified leading management practices for four areas that we and 
others have previously found to be important for the success of large 
information technology (IT) programs--planning and monitoring, 
requirements management, contract management, and risk management. 
[Footnote 39] We then reviewed plans to determine if they addressed 
these leading practices. For the four management areas, we examined 
plans, organization charts, and program records to determine whether 
and when managers had been assigned. To the extent that MIDAS had 
progressed to a stage where implementation of these practices would be 
appropriate, we reviewed program artifacts and interviewed program 
officials to determine the extent to which the practices were in place. 

We assessed a practice as being satisfied if the evidence provided by 
USDA and FSA officials demonstrated all aspects of the leading 
practice. We assessed a practice as being not satisfied if the 
evidence did not demonstrate any aspect of the leading practice, or if 
no evidence was provided by USDA or FSA for that practice. Finally, we 
assessed a practice as being partially satisfied if the evidence 
demonstrated some, but not all, aspects of the leading practice. 
Additional considerations in our evaluation of each management area 
follow. 

* Project planning and monitoring: We compared program plans, 
including the project management plan and supporting documentation, 
against leading practices to determine whether such practices were 
specified in the plans. We also examined program artifacts and records 
to determine the extent to which an integrated project team, an 
integrated project schedule with external dependencies, and tracking 
and reporting of program progress outside the program were in place. 
Due to the early stage of the program, we did not verify whether 
earned value management had been executed and reported as planned or 
whether organizational change and communications activities had been 
executed as planned. 

* Requirements management: We compared the requirements management 
plan and related documents against leading practices to determine 
whether such practices had been specified in the plans. Because 
requirements were in the early stages of being defined during the 
period of this review, we did not verify whether FSA was executing its 
requirements management approach as planned. However, we reviewed a 
2008 requirements document containing previously elicited user 
requirements and interviewed FSA officials to determine how those 
requirements had been validated. 

* Contract management: We compared program plans, including the 
project management plan and supporting documentation, against leading 
practices to determine whether such practices had been specified in 
the plans. Due to the critical role of the system integrator contract 
in achieving program goals, we focused our assessment on this 
contract, the deliverables specified in this contract, and the review 
criteria for one deliverable--the strategy plan to decompose the 
requirements document. We verified whether the review criteria had 
been applied to this deliverable. We did not verify whether other 
planning phase contract deliverables had been evaluated by the gate 
review panel according to corresponding review criteria. We compared 
the descriptions of contractor tasks from contract management 
documents to each other and when we identified similar or identical 
tasks for different contractors, we interviewed FSA officials to 
obtain their explanations for the roles of each contractor and to 
clarify the contract management documentation. We reviewed the risk 
inventory to determine whether duplicate contractor roles had been 
identified as risks and how the risks were described. 

* Risk management: We compared the risk management plan and supporting 
documentation against leading practices to determine whether such 
practices had been specified in plans. We also reviewed the November 
2010 risk inventory to assess whether risks had been aligned with risk 
factors such as mitigation plans and status. We did not assess whether 
FSA assigned the risk indicators according to the criteria in the risk 
management plan. To assess whether the risk inventory was being 
updated, we compared the November 2010 risk inventory to risk 
inventories from January 2011 and May 2011 to characterize overall 
changes to risks, mitigation strategies, and status, and to determine 
whether the inventories clearly captured progress in addressing 
selected risks. 

To determine whether MIDAS has appropriate executive oversight and 
governance, we reviewed USDA guidance for investment management, 
project plans, charters, and meeting minutes for the governance 
bodies, agency presentations, and 2009 and 2010 USDA and FSA reports 
to Congress to identify the executive oversight and governance bodies, 
responsibilities, and hierarchy for MIDAS. We also interviewed USDA 
and FSA officials about MIDAS governance structure and practices. We 
compared the information we obtained with USDA's capital planning and 
investment control guidance, which comports with federal IT investment 
management guidance, and with our IT investment management 
framework[Footnote 40] to ascertain whether USDA had complied with its 
own guidance for overseeing the investment and the extent to which 
governance bodies, their responsibilities, and processes had been 
defined. 

We performed our work at the USDA office in Washington, D.C. We 
conducted this performance audit from October 2010 to July 2011 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: MIDAS Farm Programs: 

Farm program: 
1. Asparagus Market Loss Program.
2. Average Crop Revenue Election.
3. Biomass Crop Assistance Program.
4. Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.
5. Conservation Reserve Program.
6. Cottonseed Program.
7. Dairy Indemnity Payments Program.
8. Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payments Program.
9. Durum Wheat Quality Program.
10. Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-raised 
Fish.
11. Emergency Conservation Program.
12. Emergency Forest Restoration Program.
13. Emergency Forestry Conservation Program.
14. Emergency Livestock Assistance Program.
15. Farm Storage Facility Loan Program.
16. Farmable Wetlands Program.
17. Geographically Disadvantaged Farmer or Rancher.
18. Grassland Reserve Program.
19. Hard White Wheat Development Program.
20. Karnal Bunt Program.
21. Livestock Forage Disaster Program.
22. Livestock Indemnity Program.
23. Loan Deficiency Payments.
24. Marketing Assistance Loans.
25. Milk Income Loss Contract Program.
26. Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.
27. Oil Seed Quality Incentives Program.
28. Source Water Protection Program.
29. Sugar Loan Program.
30. Sugar Storage Facility Loan Program.
31. Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program.
32. Tobacco Transition Payment Programs.
33. Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers Program.
34. Transition Incentives Program.
35. Tree Assistance Program.
36. Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program.
37. Boll Weevil Eradication Loan Program. 

Source: FSA reported data. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: Comments from the Department of Agriculture: 

USDA: 
United States Department of Agriculture: 
Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services: 
Farm Service Agency: 
Office of the Administrator: 
1400 Independence Ave, SW: 
Stop 0501: 
Washington, DC 20250-5501:  

July 6, 2011: 

T0: David A. Powner: 
Director, Information Technology Management: 
Government Accountability Office: 

From: [Signed by] Bruce Nelson: 
Administrator: 
Farm Service Agency: 

Subject: Response to GAO-11-586 Draft Report: USDA Systems 
Modernization - Management and Oversight Improvement Are Needed: 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) generally agrees with the 
content and recommendations in the draft report. 

Based on the planning, requirements and design sessions in Fiscal Year 
(FY) 2011, USDA will review and revise as appropriate the overall 
schedule, costs and milestones and submit them as part of this year's 
Office of Management and Budget business case/capital planning 
submission process. In addition, at the completion of the primary 
blueprinting and design phase in the first quarter of FY 2012, the 
Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) 
program will be able to more precisely estimate the cost and iterative 
schedules for the solution deployment phases by the end of the second 
quarter of FY 2012. 

USDA also will complete the program management plan and risk 
management improvements by the end of the second quarter of FY 2012. 
This effort will include the validation of the user pain points 
against the requirements. And, USDA will develop the processes for 
maintaining the external project team stakeholder commitment and 
integrated initiative schedule. 

In addition, to ensure that the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) is 
employing leading practices for program planning and monitoring 
requirements, management, contract management, and risk management; 
the FSA, in coordination with the USDA Chief Information Officer, the 
Office of the Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agriculture 
Services, and relevant Departmental agency heads, will assess and re-
charter the initiative governance. The charter, sponsored by the 
Secretary, will be completed by the end of the second quarter of FY 
2012, including a delineation of the roles, responsibilities and 
processes. 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contact: 

David A. Powner, (202) 512-9286 or pownerd@gao.gov: 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

In addition to the contact name above, the following staff made key 
contributions to this report: Paula Moore (assistant director), Neil 
Doherty, Claudia Fletcher, Nancy Glover, Javier Irizarry, and Karl 
Seifert. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] FSA estimates that the total amount of fiscal year 2010 payments 
was $10 billion. 

[2] The other two agencies are the Natural Resources Conservation 
Service, which administers programs that provide funding to landowners 
and other partners, and Rural Development, which offers business loans 
and grant programs for rural development. 

[3] See also the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program, 
authorized by the 2008 farm bill, the Food, Conservation, and Energy 
Act of 2008, as amended, Pub. L. No. 110-246, § 12033(b), 122 Stat. 
1651, 2156, June 18, 2008. This program provides crop disaster 
payments for eligible losses incurred during years 2008 through 2011. 

[4] FSA began migrating selected applications to the Web farm in 2002. 
In late 2006, it began experiencing performance issues with the Web 
farm and began an effort to correct the problems with an initiative 
called Stabilization, which cost $118.7 million and was reported as 
being completed in fiscal year 2010. 

[5] The common computing environment provides administrative 
applications--such as common e-mail, telecommunications, and Microsoft 
Office tools--to the three service center agencies. FSA reported that 
upgrades to the common computing environment will help ensure that the 
FSA local office staff have the desktop computers, telecommunication, 
and Internet services to use the program applications. 

[6] GAO, Information Technology: Agriculture Needs to Strengthen 
Management Practices for Stabilizing Its Farm Program Delivery 
Systems, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-657] 
(Washington, D.C.: May 16, 2008); FSA, MIDAS C1-04 Concept of 
Operations (October 2010); MIDAS Project Management Plan (PMP) (August 
2010); BearingPoint, Delivery of Legislatively Mandated Farm Benefit 
Programs: A Third Party Report on Modernization and Stabilization at 
FSA (January 2009). 

[7] See for example the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments 
Program included in the most recent farm bill--the Food, Conservation, 
and Energy Act of 2008, as amended, Pub. L. No. 110-246, § 12033(b). 

[8] Enterprise resource planning refers to commercial off-the-shelf 
software that incorporates shared data from various lines of business 
and that is consistent across an entire organization. 

[9] Pub. L. No. 110-246, Sec. 1618, 122 Stat. 1651, 1750, June 18, 
2008; H.R. Rep. No. 111-279, at 70-71 (2009) (Conf. Rep.); and H.R. 
Rep. No. 110-258, at 57 (2007). 

[10] FSA, A Report to Congress on FSA IT Systems Modernization and 
Stabilization (August 2010); USDA, A Report to Congress on the USDA's 
Oversight of FSA's IT Modernization (September 2009); and USDA, A 
Report to Congress on the MIDAS Program (Washington, D.C., August 
2008). 

[11] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-657]. 

[12] This review also assessed the extent to which USDA's 
stabilization plan addressed key management issues for its existing 
farm program delivery systems. 

[13] GAO, Information Technology: Foundational Steps Being Taken to 
Make Needed FBI Systems Modernization Management Improvements, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-842] (Washington, D.C.: 
Sept. 10, 2004) and Information Technology: FBI Is Implementing Key 
Acquisition Methods on Its New Case Management System, but Related 
Agencywide Guidance Needs to Be Improved, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-1014] (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 23, 
2008). 

[14] Software Engineering Institute, Capability Maturity Model® 
Integration for Development (CMMI), version 1.2 (Pittsburgh, Penn., 
August 2006) and Software Engineering Institute, Capability Maturity 
Model® Integration for Acquisition (CMMI), version 1.2 (Pittsburgh, 
Penn., November 2007). 

[15] OMB Cir. A-11, Capital Programming Guide, Supplement to Part 7: 
Planning, Budgeting, and Acquisition of Capital Assets, (Washington, 
D.C.: June 2006). 

[16] GAO, Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework 
for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-394G] (Washington, D.C.: March 
2004); Information Technology: U.S. Postal Service Needs to Strengthen 
System Acquisition and Management Capabilities to Improve Its 
Intelligent Mail Full Service Program, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-145] (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 29, 
2009); DOD Business Systems Modernization: Billions Continue to Be 
Invested with Inadequate Management Oversight and Accountability, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-615] (Washington, D.C.: 
May 27, 2004). 

[17] For example, monthly reports are posted on the OMB Web-based IT 
Dashboard, at [hyperlink, http://it.usaspending.gov]. 

[18] OMB, 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information 
Technology Management (Washington, D.C., Dec. 9, 2010). 

[19] The variance in the estimated development cost is roughly 
estimated at -50% to +100%. 

[20] FSA officials reported in April 2011 that USDA had budgeted and 
approved $50 million for MIDAS for fiscal year 2011. 

[21] Approximately $5 million has been obligated for acquisition 
support and government salaries and expenses. 

[22] The MIDAS budget and cost management plan states that cost 
estimates will be based on our cost estimating guide, GAO, Cost 
Estimating and Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Developing and 
Managing Capital Program Costs, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-3SP] (Washington, D.C.: March 2009). 

[23] OMB's 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information 
Technology Management report, released in December 2010, advises 
agencies to use a modular system of development for IT projects. 

[24] Maintenance is planned through fiscal year 2018. 

[25] FSA identified nine common processes that are used by more than 
one farm program: agreement modifications, agreements, application, 
assessment, audit, claims, payments, program management, and 
repayments. 

[26] CMMI for Development, version 1.2; [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-394G]. 

[27] OMB, 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information 
Technology Management. 

[28] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-3SP]. 

[29] OMB and our cost guidance (GAO-09-3SP) call for monitoring 
project cost, schedule, and performance compliance using an industry 
standard (ANSI/EIA 748-B, Earned Value Management Systems, approved 
July 2007). 

[30] This Web site, at [hyperlink, http://it.usaspending.gov], tracks 
major federal IT investments. 

[31] CMMI for Development, version 1.2. 

[32] CMMI for Acquisition, version 1.2, and GAO, Information 
Technology: Immigration and Customs Enforcement Needs to Fully Address 
Significant Infrastructure Modernization Program Management 
Weaknesses, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-565] 
(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 27, 2007). 

[33] CMMI for Acquisition, version 1.2, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-145], and [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-07-565]. 

[34] [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-394G], [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-145], and GAO, United States Coast 
Guard: Improvements Needed in Management and Oversight of Rescue 
System Acquisition, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-623] (Washington, D.C.: May 31, 
2006). 

[35] OMB Cir. A-11, Capital Programming Guide, Supplement to Part 7: 
Planning, Budgeting, and Acquisition of Capital Assets (Washington, 
D.C.: June 2006). 

[36] GAO, Information Technology: OMB's Dashboard Has Increased 
Transparency and Oversight, but Improvements Needed, GAO-10-701 
(Washington, D.C.: July 16, 2010). 

[37] FSA officials reported that another body that was to perform this 
role, called the Enterprise Resource Planning Center of Excellence, is 
not overseeing MIDAS. 

[38] The IT Dashboard [hytperlink, http://it.usaspending.gov] tracks 
the performance of major federal IT investments. The dashboard CIO 
rating for MIDAS was 3 out of 5 in January 2011 and 4 out of 5 in 
March 2011. 

[39] Software Engineering Institute, Capability Maturity Model® 
Integration for Development (CMMI), version 1.2 (Pittsburgh, Penn., 
August 2006) and Software Engineering Institute, Capability Maturity 
Model® Integration for Acquisition (CMMI), version 1.2 (Pittsburgh, 
Penn., November 2007). 

[40] GAO, Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework 
for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity, [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-394G] (Washington, D.C.: March 
2004). 

[End of section] 

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