On a Mission to Get Competitive

ean O'Keefe isn't shy about putting his stamp on NASA. In just seven months as the agency's administrator, O'Keefe has scaled back the design of the International Space Station, pursued new ties with the Defense Department and scrapped the "faster, better, cheaper," mantra of his predecessor, Daniel Goldin. Instead, O'Keefe wants the agency to focus on leap-ahead research and exploration that cannot be done in the private sector.

How this will change NASA's buying habits is an open question. But early signs suggest O'Keefe is keen to invest in next-generation systems for exploration and space science, as long as they avoid cost overruns. For example, he wants to resume NASA's long-stalled research on nuclear propulsion systems, which could one day power deep space probes and Mars landers. To finance this five-year, $1 billion effort, O'Keefe axed probe missions to the Pluto-Kuiper asteroid belt and Jupiter's moon Europa, both of which were over budget.

O'Keefe also cut funding for the space station's crew return vehicle, a lifeboat designed to bring astronauts back to Earth in emergencies. He plowed the funds into research for a craft that could shuttle crew to the station and back, reflecting his preference for platforms that have multiple uses.

O'Keefe also likes competition. In his previous job as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, he issued a policy requiring agencies to let private firms bid on work performed by federal employees. NASA will meet OMB's mandate to compete 15 percent of its jobs, perhaps even a year early, according to Thomas Luedtke, associate administrator for procurement at the agency. But with just 19,000 civil servants and 140,000 contractor employees, NASA can only shift so many more jobs to the private sector. So the agency is looking for other ways to reap the benefits of competition. Besides holding job competitions, the agency might hold full competitions on contracts to operate the space station and space shuttle, both of which have been awarded on a sole-source basis in the past.

The shuttle's future will be decided later this summer after NASA finishes a review of privatization options, including transferring ownership to a government corporation. Currently, the vast majority of shuttle operations are handled by the United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But NASA still has several hundred civil servants working on the shuttle, including some who share technical work with contractors, according to Luedtke. Putting these workers under one roof could create efficiencies and cost savings, as could transferring ownership of some shuttle assets to the private sector, he says.

"There will still be government oversight, but rather than having some technical expertise in government and some in industry, you would have it all in one place," says Luedtke. If the review concludes that NASA should privatize the shuttle, affected employees would not be able to compete for their jobs, as is customary in outsourcing decisions. But NASA would encourage outsourced shuttle workers to join the contractor, according to Luedtke.

Luedtke is optimistic that the General Accounting Office will soon take NASA contract management off of its "high-risk" list of management problems, where it has been a fixture since 1990. Last year, the agency sharply curtailed its use of unnegotiated contract changes, a practice where contractors begin work on an order before a price has been negotiated. NASA also is having some success at recruiting employees to replace its aging procurement staff, according to Luedtke.