"Cost growth and delays are par for the course on projects like this and -- if the unvalidated numbers can be trusted -- some of them may be in OK shape given the change justifications, mostly conceivably valid, that have been given," said Brooks Hilliard, a consultant and expert witness who has testified extensively in litigation involving troubled software projects, via email.

"For the most part, the ones that seem to be in the most trouble are those that were initiated five or more years ago," Hilliard added. "But this doesn't necessarily mean the Obama administration projects are better or in less trouble, only that there's less info about them because they are younger and, if they are in trouble, the sponsors are more able to hide it."

On the other hand, newer ERP projects are more likely to have Web-based components, and "therefore might be less expensive, easier to manage, and less likely to go off track," he added.

Audits are a must if the government is serious about improving the success rate of ERP projects, Krigsman added. "You'd have to go back and audit each project individually to figure out what happened and then look across projects to see the common threads," he said. "Then you could make changes. You can't start from the top and make a sweeping change because you don't know what's going on."

Validating the figures was outside the scope of the report, which had a fairly short turnaround time, said Asif Khan, director of financial management and assurance at the GAO.