The New Regime

Maybe it does take a rocketeer to manage NASA. That's the unspoken premise in every move Michael Griffin has made since taking his oath on April 14 as the space agency's 11th administrator. While restructuring management and revamping NASA's plans for the moon and Mars, Griffin has made it clear to politicians, private industry and the public that he's the antithesis of his predecessor, a budgeteer.

Sean O'Keefe went to NASA from the Office of Management and Budget to straighten out a fiscal mess and ended up leading the agency through one of its darkest periods after the February 2003 loss of the space shuttle Columbia. To aid the recovery, O'Keefe, a protégé of Dick Cheney's during the vice president's days as Defense secretary, pulled strings with the White House to get a new vision for U.S. space exploration. In January 2004, President Bush directed NASA to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and then send them on to Mars. When O'Keefe left government in March, the agency still hadn't established firm plans.

Griffin, a scientist and engineer with six advanced academic degrees and a wealth of experience in the civilian and military sectors of the space industry, promised in his Senate confirmation hearing to speed up the process. The straight-talking outsider doesn't boast O'Keefe's Oval Office ties and doesn't seem to care. "If [the president] wants me to do something else," Griffin has said on several occasions, "I am sure he knows my phone number."

A dose of pragmatism isn't the only thing Griffin delivered to NASA in the past six months. He's given a retro appearance to the agency's plan for the moon and Mars. From spacecraft to supervision, it looks a lot like Apollo.

Proposed crew and cargo capsules resemble the spacecraft that traveled to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But they would blast off atop boosters derived from space shuttle components because the mighty Saturn 5 rocket isn't in production any more. To put four astronauts on the lunar surface by 2018 without significant budget increases will cost $104 billion-a little more than half of Apollo's cost, in today's dollars. A go-as-you-can-pay approach will permit at least two expeditions per year. Plans beyond that aren't clear.

In July, Griffin resurrected the 1970s executive position of associate administrator and promoted chief engineer Rex Geveden to fill it. With Geveden serving as chief operating officer, the administrator is free to tackle policy and strategy issues. Griffin also established an independent Program Analysis and Evaluation Office to "scrub" plans and budgets, and shifted reporting authority for the directors of NASA's 10 field installations from the mission directorates to Geveden. He's warned of a change in the structure of the Independent Technical Authority, which NASA formed in response to recommendations from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Griffin looked back on his first several months as administrator in an interview with Government Executive on Sept. 15. He declined to answer questions about the agency's exploration architecture, which he unveiled publicly four days later. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.

GE:

In the 2005 operating plan update NASA submitted to the Senate Appropriations Committee in July, you detailed several organizational changes. Which of these changes will have the greatest impact on NASA's ability to achieve its showcase mission of exploration?

Griffin:

I don't think any single change will have the greatest impact. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board report was not flattering about NASA organization and institutions and programs. NASA needed a fresh look. The organization hasn't adapted to the changes yet, but it will.

GE:

What is NASA's most pressing management problem, and what are you doing to solve it?

Griffin:

To get all parts of the agency solidly on course behind this vision. It can't be accomplished in a grand, sweeping gesture or a single speech. The blocking and tackling of change, realignment, organizational restructuring for efficiency has to be done one day at a time.

GE:

NASA has been criticized for promoting U.S. exploration goals at the expense of aeronautics research. What agencies will pick up the work that NASA is setting aside?

Griffin:

NASA's not a one-trick pony. We have three broad themes-exploration, science and aeronautics-and they each have to be nurtured.

We are refocusing aeronautics to be more involved with basic research and key experiments, and getting away from the recent history of demonstrator projects. We're hoping to craft a more interesting and exciting aeronautics program that people will believe is worthy of being funded. That goal is entirely separate from the exploration goal.

NASA is not the only stakeholder in the nation's aeronautics program. There should be a strategic plan for aeronautics. NASA should play a part in it with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Defense Department and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

GE:

What's behind the workforce "rightsizing" taking place at the field centers and headquarters?

Griffin:

Our plans and our budgets left us with 2,000 civil servants who weren't assigned to a job that NASA was doing. For many years, NASA did not address a growing mismatch between what our civil service skill mix was and what we needed it to be. As we change our emphasis, some skills aren't needed anymore.

Also, the centers tend to contract for work that could be done by civil servants. We want to shift some of the work around so centers short on tasks and long on staff can pick up some of the load. Even after we do some of that, there will still be folks at NASA who just aren't needed for the kinds of things that we're doing going forward. We will in-source to the extent that it makes sense, not simply to find people a job. A RIF in the hundreds by next summer would not be unlikely.

GE:

In public appearances over the summer, you offered your thoughts about acquisition and procurement, saying there will be substantial rewards for those who can deliver and little leniency for those who don't. You want to boost commercial opportunities but rely less on unproven suppliers. You're more interested in bringing jobs back to NASA than in converting field installations to federally funded research and development centers. What else can you tell us about your philosophy?

Griffin:

There has been a trend in government, roughly since the Berlin Wall fell, to outsource not only production and development work to industry-where it belongs-but also to outsource the core system engineering and architectural design of large systems. That trend has proven to be poor.

A couple of summers ago, the Defense Science Board published an insightful report noting that, in the acquisition of space systems, the government needed to take back the system engineering role. NASA is not as far down that road as the Defense Department has gotten. I don't propose to let NASA go down that road. We had started down that path.

The core intellectual property associated with completing the exploration vision on behalf of American taxpayers has to be held within the government. It can't be offered up for bid by private contractors who could be out of business or merge or be acquired in five years or 10 years. We need to take back the system engineering and architectural responsibility. Prime contractors will bid on top-level designs required by the government rather than be asked to tell the government what it should be building. This also will change the nature of what a NASA civil servant does to earn his paycheck.

GE:

Do you see any conflict with competitive sourcing items in the President's Management Agenda?

Griffin:

Competitive sourcing items in the President's Management Agenda emphatically do not include fundamental research and exploratory development. I spoke with [Office of Management and Budget Director] Josh Bolten personally on this topic, and he said some of the agencies are going too far. We're talking about painting the walls and mowing the grass and doing routine tasks, not about fundamental research and development.

GE:

How will you address the need to beef up the acquisition and procurement function with people who understand systems engineering?

Griffin:

Try to hire the best people I can. I'm certainly not going to add employees to civil service because 80 percent of our money goes out to industry and should. I'm changing the nature of the work that goes out to industry and what stays here. We absolutely will need more system engineering expertise. As we shed some skills that are no longer relevant, we will have to acquire some skills that are relevant. To the extent that people want to retrain themselves, NASA makes available opportunities in all forms, from tuition reimbursement to in-house courses and mentoring opportunities.

GE:

Two lawmakers tried to characterize your management style at a House Science Committee hearing on NASA's future in June. Chairman [Sherwood] Boehlert [R-N.Y.] likened you to "the Man of La Mancha," righting wrongs and rescuing programs in distress, while Rep. [Dana] Rohrabacher [R-Calif.] said you might more aptly be nicknamed "Conan the Barbarian" for your bold moves early in your tenure. Which of these descriptions is closer to the truth, and why?

Griffin:

Neither one. I would characterize myself as somebody who has a very clear understanding of the administration's vision for NASA. Given that understanding, I have a pronounced ability to rack up program priorities and, when the money runs out, I am perfectly capable of cutting them off the bottom. I don't feel like I'm being a barbarian for eliminating the priorities that we can't afford and that least fit our overall mission. The opposite is true: I'm being an efficient manager. When I run out of money, I stop doing tasks, rather than as has been the practice often in the past of continuing every task a little bit so that nobody feels like they've truly been shut off.

I certainly would not characterize myself as Don Quixote-like, tilting at unconquerable windmills. I've never had time for taking on a task that was inherently undoable. One of my favorite quotes is the monk's prayer about the will to change what can be changed, the strength to endure what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference. If I have a guiding light, that would be it.

GE:

What is the biggest lesson you've learned in six months?

Griffin:

The most important thing for me to know and realize every day is that I'm impatient. Not everything I believe is necessary can be accomplished as quickly as I would like. I need to surround myself with a team of people who can help me restrain some of that impatience. If I'm not continually relearning that lesson, it gets forgotten pretty quickly.

GE:

You're a presidential appointee and you have said you don't expect to be retained by the next administration. What, in your impatient vision, will have changed on the day you step down?

Griffin:

The space station will be largely complete. The last few flights of the space shuttle will be ahead of us and the shuttle's successor will be solidly in development and coming on line. It will be accepted that NASA's next important task is to return to the moon. People will see the connection between the architecture for doing that and subsequent voyages to Mars.

The science program will be a crown jewel in the nation's activities, and we'll have an exciting aeronautics program.