Over the last 8 years, many governmental projects have failed to take into account basic principles of systems and software engineering, design, computer security, and privacy. The REAL ID proposal, for example, stored personal data in unencrypted form, relied on databases which didn't yet exist, and ignored the questions of false positives due to inaccurate data. Independent review by experts can detect these issues early in the process, which either gives time for them to be addressed or allows the project to be rethought far more cheaply.