NASA Project Status Reports

Congressional Requirements Can Be Met, but Reliability Must Be Ensured Gao ID: NSIAD-90-40 January 23, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ability to produce status reports that provide sufficient and reliable cost, schedule, and performance information on major NASA projects.

GAO found that NASA and its four principal oversight congressional committees jointly established and agreed to new criteria for NASA project status reports, including: (1) required development of status reports for all research and development projects that cost at least $200 million; (2) biannual preparation of status reports for each project; and (3) a new six-part report format, with information about project status, project cost estimates, funding for project development, principal milestones, project goals and objectives, and project background. GAO also found that NASA lacked adequate internal controls to ensure the preparation and processing of current, accurate, and complete status reports, since it did not formalize its report development process, lacked written guidelines, and did not specify report development responsibilities.

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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