Focusing the Vision For Space

NASA is restructuring, but making no promises that it will adopt a recommendation to turn its 10 field installations into federally funded research and development centers. "We're attempting to wire ourselves for success," Administrator Sean O'Keefe said June 24 as he unveiled his plans for NASA's "transformation" in a nod to the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond. In a report released just eight days earlier, the commission contended that without radical change, the space agency will not be able to meet its latest, biggest challenge.

The 60-page document, "A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover," offers eight findings and 15 recommendations for carrying out President Bush's vision of a sustained and affordable series of robotic and human expeditions beginning at the moon and reaching deeper into the solar system.

The critique finds the agency's mission-focused enterprises too numerous and its mission support functions too diffuse. "The new NASA will be more frugal and more nimble" and more reliant on private industry, the commissioners write. "It will be driven by an overarching imperative to do only those things that are inherently governmental."

The organizational structure NASA inherited from the Apollo program no longer serves the agency well, according to commission chairman Edward "Pete" Aldridge, a former undersecretary of Defense. "[W]hat we're looking for [is] a balance, a mixture, an integration of robotic and human space flight," Aldridge told reporters June 16. "Can you imagine the pictures back from Mars, where there's a human and a robot doing a high-five?"

NASA's transformation begins with a headquarters realignment Aug. 1. The agency will consolidate the work of six enterprises into four mission directorates-exploration systems, space operations, science and aeronautics research. It will combine 13 administrative functions into six mission support offices for finance, information, engineering, institutions and management, legal counsel, and communications. The education enterprise and the safety and mission assurance administrative function have been elevated on a new organizational chart, which, according to O'Keefe, better reflects agency priorities and values. To improve the decision-making process, NASA will create an advanced planning directorate, a strategic planning council and a chief operating officer council.

Although the realignment complies with a Moon-Mars Commission suggestion that NASA start by streamlining, it does not address key recommendations.

The report says NASA should turn over management of nine field centers to universities or not-for-profit organizations through a competitive process. "The operation of [federally funded research and development centers] permits more flexible personnel systems and compensation," Aldridge says. The agency already has one such FFRDC, its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"It looks like the infrastructure of NASA is too large in combination to achieve the vision . . . and we'd like to see some of that reallocated," Aldridge told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on science technology and space on June 17. He said the commission settled on proposing creation of R&D centers after seriously considering a military-style base realignment and closure process for NASA. "We clearly saw the political implications of trying to do that. The report would have been burned the first day it arrived," Aldridge said.

The commission also proposes to elevate management of space exploration to the Cabinet level. The report calls on President Bush to establish a permanent Space Exploration Steering Council and empower it to set policy and coordinate the work of federal agencies contributing to exploration. The council would report to the president, be led by the vice president or another senior White House official, and include representatives from all the agencies involved, including the Defense Department.

In addition to an organizational makeover, the report recommends that NASA adopt personnel and management reforms consistent with the best practices of large, complex organizations. It also urges the agency to work with the administration and Congress to establish three independent organizations for technical advice, cost estimating, and technological research and development.

The commissioners acknowledge that NASA has gotten "an excellent start" on the road to cultural and organizational change, especially in the 17 months since the space shuttle Columbia disaster claimed the lives of seven astronauts. But they admonish the agency that "more must be done, and soon."

"If this vision is serious, which we believe it is, then the recommendations of this report are critical in the successful implementation of that vision," Aldridge told reporters. "Will it be successful without the recommendations? Maybe. But it is more likely to be successful if these recommendations are implemented, than otherwise."

In the coming months, according to O'Keefe, NASA methodically will examine the details of the report to "determine how and if" it will implement all the advice, and then present some ideas to Congress.

The president's commission was chartered in January, several days after Bush spelled out the new space policy in a speech at NASA headquarters. The commission had 120 days to do its job. Most of its deliberations occurred in five televised public hearings in cities scattered from coast to coast. Members heard formal statements from 96 witnesses, took informal statements from 38 citizens attending the hearings, and considered more than 6,000 suggestions from the public submitted through the Internet.