US Watchdog Urges Stricter Cloud Contracts for NSF
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is urging the National Science Foundation's CIO to implement stricter cloud service-level agreements (SLAs) and improve IT oversight. The recommendation calls for new contract structures and more robust vendor management. This reflects a broader trend in the public sector toward demanding greater accountability and clearer deliverables from SaaS providers.
- The Government Accountability Office's (GAO) recommendations were detailed in a letter dated February 12, 2026, and sent to National Science Foundation (NSF) CIO Clyde Richards. The letter explicitly called for the development of guidance to standardize cloud service-level agreements (SLAs) and to complete annual reviews of the agency's IT portfolio to reduce duplication. - This is not a new issue; a September 2024 GAO report found that 18 of the 24 largest federal agencies had failed to establish guidance on cloud SLAs, a key requirement of the White House's 2019 "Cloud Smart" strategy. At the time, the NSF concurred with the GAO's recommendation to develop this guidance and was expected to have completed it by September 2025. - The push for stricter contracts reflects broader federal challenges with cloud vendors. In November 2024, a separate GAO report found that multiple federal agencies experienced increased costs and vendor lock-in due to restrictive software licensing practices, such as vendors charging extra fees to use software on third-party cloud infrastructure or requiring agencies to repurchase on-premise licenses for cloud use. - Beyond standardizing SLAs, the GAO is pushing the NSF to overhaul contracts for "high value assets" that are managed in the cloud and to ensure all cloud contracts have clear remediation plans for non-compliance. - The letter to the NSF also highlighted outstanding issues in another critical area, referencing "multiple open recommendations in the area of cybersecurity" related to the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014. - These recommendations arrive as the NSF's IT department is in transition. In January 2024, the agency established a new, consolidated Office of the Chief Information Officer, a reorganization prompted by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to adapt to new technologies and
