Iteration Fatigue!

Aside from comments that are only about fixing typos and similar errors, all comments should be considered "suggestions." Just because one reviewer wants something said or done a certain way doesn't mean others will agree. 

If possible, establish one person who has "final say." After collecting comments from the group, that person should go through the review file and indicate which comments to implement. This helps solve conflicts before you make the edits. And, hopefully, it'll help you avoid re-revising the same piece.

If there just isn't one person who has that power, it might help to set up a meeting to discuss comments and decide which suggestions to use. 

Be sure to stress at the start of each review cycle what people should be looking for -- and what has already been approved (and will, therefore, cost extra to revise). That's especially important for audio and video scripts. 

Hi Marguerite. That's a very frustrating but also not uncommon challenge many of us face. It's time-consuming for us to reconcile all those edits. Plus, the agency is spending a lot of time on reviews and may be able to get a similar level of accuracy for a lot less work.

I'll second everything Judy mentioned and add on to her list:

• See if you can narrow down how much of a course each reviewer looks at. If a person's area of expertise just applies to, say, 6 of the 10 lessons in a course, you can save their time and yours by having them just review the content they're subject matter experts for.
• Collaborative editing tools can be your best friend. For instance, if three people can do their edits simultaneously in a place where they can see each other's feedback, work out conflicting feedback themselves, and not replicate efforts, that's way more efficient than each making edits separately. Review 360 is fantastic for this. And if you're just working on text documents, collaboration tools like Google Docs can be a huge help too.
• Start all projects with a kickoff meeting that outlines in writing your timeline for reviews, who is doing what at each stage, and (related to Judy's tip) who can make the final call when review feedback is at odds with each other. Having this all in writing at the start prevents any confusion. But it's also a good negotiation tool. Because a lot of times organizations don't realize how convoluted and time-consuming their review process has gotten until they see it mapped out. So seeing it in writing may make them scale back how many people are involved and/or how many layers of reviews happen.
• This will only work at some organizations, but consider framing scaling down the review process as a time and cost-savings approach. Right-sizing the number of reviewers and review passes can get a course that's still accurate but at a lower cost to the organization (both in terms of budget and how people's time is used).

Hi Marguerite, I also make eLearning for the US Federal Government and it can be exhausting. Here are some suggestions that may or may not work for your situation.

Before each course-building project, create a detailed project plan that indicates how many revisions you will do. For example, I like to keep the working group small (preferably 1-3 people) and talk with them each week as I'm building the first draft. Make sure the project owner (the decision-maker for the client) signs and agrees to the project plan. Make it formal. 

Once the first draft is done we have two stakeholder reviews where larger groups of stakeholders review the course and provide suggestions. I make no changes to the course during this time. Once all the comments are in, we go through the comments with the working group and decide if those suggestions are in or out. I make the changes, and then we have the second review, which is run the same way. 

If there are people who have "veto" power, or the power to say what must be in or out in the course, then that person has to be part of the working group. They can assign a proxy, but only if they are willing to accept the decisions their proxy makes. 

Once the two review are done, (or however many formal review you agree to at the beginning of the project) then that's it. The client has to start paying extra for every additional review. Once they know it will cost them money, they will usually pull back. Also let them know there may be charges for out-of-scope changes. 

Also understand that in the government, many people feel it's necessary to get their two-cents in, and what they say could have less to do about what they think the course should actually contain, and more about them trying to make a point, or get their pet projects to be covered in the course. So the scope should be carefully defined. 

I went through a project last year that took way too long, and no amount of detailed project plans or stern conversations about scope would help. Sometimes there's just no help. Good luck to you!