"It has become increasingly clear that modernizing NASA's financial management system is essential to providing accurate, useful financial information for external financial reporting as well as internal management decision-making. To its credit, NASA is working toward implementing an integrated financial management system that it expects to be fully operational in fiscal year 2006 at an estimated cost of $475 million. This is NASA's third attempt to implement a new financial management system. The first two efforts were abandoned after 12 years and after spending $180 million. Given the high stakes involved, it is critical that NASA's leadership provide the necessary direction, oversight, and sustained attention to ensure that this project is successful. In this regard, NASA's new Administrator comes to the position with a strong management background and expertise in financial management. Based on our discussions with the Administrator, he has made clear that he plans to make financial management a top priority"
..Testimony before the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representativesof Gregory D . Kutz, GAO: NASA Leadership and Systems Needed to Effect Financial Management Improvements - March 20, 2002
A recent GAO analysis of NASA's problems reported that the agency had mismanaged several phases of this enterprise project , such as:
http://www.gcn.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=gcndaily2&story.id=25988
It is instructive to read the further testimony of D. Kutz of the US GAO on March 20, 2002 to the US House of Represenatives Committee in the matter of project costing.
"Historical Cost Data Needed to Accurately Project Future Costs:As part of our effort to verify NASA accounting for the space station and shuttle cost limits, we also found that NASA was not able to provide support for the actual cost of completed space station components - either in total or by subsystems or elements. For example, NASA cannot identify the actual costs of individual space station components such as Unity (Node 1) or Destiny (U. S. Lab) . Although in its audited fiscal year 2000 financial statements, NASA capitalized the cost of Unity, Destiny, and other items in orbit or awaiting launch at about $8 billion, according to NASA officials, these amounts are based primarily on cost estimates, not actual costs.
NASA officials stated that its accounting systems were designed prior to the implementation of current federal cost accounting standards and financial systems standards that require agencies to track and maintain cost data needed for management activities, such as estimating and controlling costs, performance measurement, and making economic trade- off decisions. As a result, NASA's systems do not track the cost of individual space station subsystems or elements. According to NASA officials, the agency manages and tracks space station costs by contract and does not need to know the cost of individual subsystems or elements to effectively manage the program. To the contrary, we found that NASA estimates potential and probable future program costs to determine the impact of canceling, deferring, or adding space station content. These cost estimates often identify the cost of specific space station subsystems. However, because NASA does not attempt to track costs by element or subsystems, the agency does not know the actual cost of completed space station components and is not able to reexamine its cost estimates for validity once costs have been realized. We continue to believe that NASA needs to collect, maintain, and report the full cost of individual subsystems and hardware so that NASA can make valid comparisons between estimates and final costs and so that the Congress can hold NASA accountable for differences between budgeted and actual costs."
Further he said..
"the IFMPS was not built with the needs of program managers and cost estimators in mind. As a result NASA will continue to have two sets of books."