Testing and Evaluation Guide: Best Practices for Commercial Off-the-Shelf Systems (Exposure Draft)

Filed 1h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Kings of Tara

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Meul (Meul) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO released a draft guide of best practices for how federal agencies should test and evaluate commercially available products, like airport scanners or ship sensors, before buying them. The draft responds to prior GAO findings of problems in how agencies conduct such testing and the absence of any widely accepted process for sharing best practices.

GAO is accepting public comment on the guide through December 14, 2026, before finalizing it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Billions of dollars in purchases and it took this long to write down what a good test looks like. That's not incompetence exactly, it's just what happens when nobody's job is to ask the obvious question before the check gets signed. Here's hoping the final version gets read by more people than the draft.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Kings of Tara · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

Read it scored.

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