Change record: GAO publishes the revised Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide
GAO published GAO-20-195G for developing and managing credible program costs.
What changed
GAO published GAO-20-195G for developing and managing credible program costs.
This entry preserves the event separately from maintained provider and capability conclusions. A rule, announcement, release, enforcement record, or market transaction can be material before enough evidence exists to revise a company classification or comparison.
Operating consequence
The event changes the maintained standards, product, portfolio, or market context. Buyers should update affected records while keeping official announcements separate from configured behavior, project adoption, integration, implementation, and outcome evidence.
Teams should identify which records, populations, systems, transactions, jurisdictions, products, or decisions fall within the change. Then assign an accountable owner, response date, evidence requirement, and disposition. Broad reassessment is not always necessary, but a material event deserves a documented decision.
Capabilities to revisit
Estimating Assemblies And Cost Database Workflow
Review the maintained workflow definition, then ask affected organizations to show how this event alters inputs, governed rules, human judgment, exceptions, action, evidence retention, and downstream exchange for estimating assemblies and cost database workflow.
Budget Cost-Code And Original-Contract Control
Review the maintained workflow definition, then ask affected organizations to show how this event alters inputs, governed rules, human judgment, exceptions, action, evidence retention, and downstream exchange for budget cost-code and original-contract control.
Cost-To-Complete Forecast And Variance Analysis
Review the maintained workflow definition, then ask affected organizations to show how this event alters inputs, governed rules, human judgment, exceptions, action, evidence retention, and downstream exchange for cost-to-complete forecast and variance analysis.
Project Risk Issue Contingency And Exposure Analysis
Review the maintained workflow definition, then ask affected organizations to show how this event alters inputs, governed rules, human judgment, exceptions, action, evidence retention, and downstream exchange for project risk issue contingency and exposure analysis.
Questions for operating teams
- Which exact population and effective date does the source establish?
- Does the change alter authority, policy, content, workflow, integration, evidence, or only market positioning?
- What customer-controlled interpretation, configuration, or process remains outside a provider's responsibility?
- What test case would show whether the operational consequence has reached production?
- What record will close, defer, or supersede this review?
Evidence boundary
The source class is Official government guidance. It establishes only the statements supported by the linked record and does not, by itself, establish implementation depth, market-wide availability, transaction-specific applicability, independent efficacy, or a universal buyer conclusion.