Improvements Needed in NOAA's Management of Its Charting Operations

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Ocean Survey (NOS) is responsible for the production and distribution of aeronautical and nautical charts.

NOS has considerable difficulty in accurately accounting for the cost of producing charts. It also has problems in matching revenues from the sale of charts to costs of producing the charts. Although a pricing formula was developed to determine which costs were to be recovered in establishing prices for charts, NOS has been inconsistent in its application of the formula. The receipts from the sales of charts with regard to public funds have not been adequately managed. There is a need for more definitive policy guidance statements and operations manuals dealing with the Office of Aeronautical Chart and Cartography's chart production and inventory operations. Lack of policy guidance has resulted in excessive production overruns. NOS does not perform cost analyses to determine which chart production projects could be carried out more efficiently under contract, nor does it accumulate adequate data with which to make such studies.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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