I did not see Tuesday’s Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing for NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale, but based on news reports in the Houston Chronicle and Space News [subscription required], but it would seem that the senators in attendance at the hearing focused less on Dale’s credentials and more on the state of NASA’s financial management system. The senators, it seems, were following up on last week’s House hearing on NASA finances, which featured the release of a GAO report that strongly criticized the agency for failing to improve its financial management despite the development of a new system designed to address past concerns.
This might sound like a minor issue, but even the perception that NASA can’t properly keep track of the funding it does receive could become an issue in a time when some members of Congress are sharpening their budget axes. Florida Today, a newspaper hardly known as a being a NASA basher, went so far in an editorial Sunday to recommend that “moon funding should be withheld until NASA proves it has its fiscal house in order.” Dale, whose nomination will likely go to the full Senate for approval later this week, told members of the committee that she would work with the financial auditors who have flagged problems with the existing system, as well as people within the agency and financial experts in other government agencies, to fix the problems.
It ought to be a huge blot on Sean O’Keefe’s reputation, because it was the one thing that he said he was good at. Even more so because, according to the GAO report, O’Keefe’s reforms caused some of the problems that they were intended to solve: “The problems we found with NASA’s travel data point to weaknesses in NASA’s full-cost accounting initiative.” Whose idea was full-cost accounting?
But it’s like talking into the wind to say it. The GAO report doesn’t even mention O’Keefe by name. No one cares to learn from the mistake of praising bad ideas.
Whose idea was full-cost accounting?
It’s been required of all federal agencies by federal law and financial accounting standards since fiscal year 1998. Goldin was still trying to implement it when he got canned.
The idea didn’t originate with O’Keefe, Greg. He was simply the man sent in to try to finish the job.
One can always argue that any simple slogan like “full-cost accounting” was someone else’s idea all along. Implementation was nonetheless O’Keefe’s work. Accounting was supposed to be his big qualification — he even said that he liked to be called a bean counter. He also bragged about full-cost accounting, and financial reorganization in general:
If this was the big feather in O’Keefe’s cap, then GAO ought to be slamming him for it. Why should he get a free pass just because he quit?