The Department of Veterans Affairs could further improve the development process for the IT system it is implementing to deliver education benefits to veterans under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, GAO has said.
It said the department has made important progress in delivering key automated capabilities to process the new education benefits, for example by deploying the first two of four releases of its long-term system solution by its planned dates, thereby providing regional processing offices with key automated capabilities to prepare original and amended benefit claims.
VA’s incremental approach – dubbed the "Agile" process – also gave it the flexibility to accommodate legislative changes and provide functionality according to business priorities, according to GAO-11-115.
It said however that while progress has been made, that VA did not ensure that certain critical tasks were completed that were initially expected to be included in the second release by June 30, 2010.
For example, the conversion of data from systems in the interim solution to systems developed for the long-term solution was not completed until August 23, 2010.
Because of the delay, VA planned to reprioritize the functionality that was to be included in the third release.
VA reported obligations and expenditures for project releases, through July 2010, to be approximately $84.6 million, with additional planned obligations of $122.5 million through fiscal 2011 and GAO cited opportunities for improvements to its development process.
For example, it could establish metrics for project goals or prioritize project constraints; always maintain traceability between legislation, policy, business rules, and test cases; establish criteria for work that was considered "done" at all levels of the project; provide for quality unit and functional testing during the second release; and implement an oversight tool that depicted the rate of the work completed and the changes to project scope over time.
Until VA improves these areas, management will lack the visibility it needs to clearly communicate progress and unresolved issues in its development processes may not allow VA to maximize the benefits of the system, said GAO.
