NASA OIG Criticizes Current JPL Contract

JPL has world class engineers but JPL management needs to be replaced. What the JPL workers send to their management is NOT what goes to NASA HQ. The ridiculous number of reviews that MSL has had for overruns is a reason to cancel it. JPL insiders have already said they expect to request an augmentation in the next couple months. SMAP is another mission with management game playing.

The worst part of this contract with NASA is Elachi gets to sit on the NASA Management Councils yet APL doesn't. APL is an URDC but doesn't get the benefits JPL does. In fact APL has to report to a center programs and doesn't have the direct link that JPL does to HQ.

Bottom line - the JPL management needs to be replaced. They constantly manipulate the truth of their projects to NASA HQ to piecemeal funding to their Lab for the broken projects. However, NASA HQ are partially to blame for allowing JPL to continuously get away with this behavior.

I find it odd that while showing MSL's failings when weighting the projects under the Mars Program's perfomance (page 18 in the pdf) it excludes Mars Odyssey and the Mars Exploration Rovers.

Seems if weighted scores are to be examined, the least the report can do is include all projects inside a program.

...and the beat goes on. JPL does do good work, however its ability to operate as it does is getting very old for the agency.

I agree some form of change would be good for JPL and NASA.

If the NASA OIG criticizes the way JPL is operated by NASA, let's hope it also does a complete job and looks at how the in-house NASA Centers are operated. At least JPL runs under full-cost accounting, so everybody knows what things really cost. Constellation, Shuttle, Hubble, and countless other NASA projects operated by JSC, MSFC, KSC, and GSFC only report a portion of their costs, with everything else being lumped into agency overhead.

I would suggest that people living in glass houses stop throwing stones. While some of JPL's projects have gone over budget, NASA know the real cost numbers and can apply real fixes. When Constellation and other programs go south, we're only seeing the tip of the overrun iceberg.

richard: "If the NASA OIG criticizes the way JPL is operated by NASA, let's hope it also does a complete job and looks at how the in-house NASA Centers are operated."

A few years ago NASA was moving toward full cost accounting across the agency. Perhaps it was under O'Keefe? Can't remember now. Anyway, it was canned. Never knew why, but I'm guessing the centers were afraid of the fallout when everyone had to be above board about true costs. I still think full cost accounting across the agency is a good idea. Especially when centers end up competing for funding. Perhaps another reason was NASA's archaic financial reporting system, which I believe NASA still gets low marks on.

@richard
I was wondering what the heck JPL did to CxP - it seems like it's been getting picked on alot, but I'm not familiar with JPL much less insider politics there. But seems odd from the outside that 1st there was the invasive personnel thing that went to court, then this stuff.

@full cost accounting
Agree. Not sure, but thought that in Shuttle anyways, the contractor (USA) was maintaining full cost accounting for NASA, at least on the Direct Shuttle stuff. Thought that was part of their Logistics, Procurement, & Program Controls functions? The NASA overhead blackhole was only for non-direct stuff?

But maybe the "GFE+no bid FTEs from multi-contractors" trend in creative CxP (no)contract management has muddied all that up?