NASA Property

Poor lending practices and controls at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory--the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) principal center for solar system exploration--have allowed employees to borrow NASA equipment, including computers, VCRs, and cellular phones for years at a time, and the Laboratory has written off more than $5 million worth of NASA items as lost or stolen. The Laboratory, which is federally funded but managed by Caltech, has about 6,400 employees and an annual operating budget of about $1 billion. GAO found major weaknesses in the policies, procedures, and practices for lending NASA equipment to Laboratory employees; in the identification and control of NASA equipment at Caltech; and in the Laboratory's overall property management system. The upshot is that equipment has been purchased unnecessarily, underused, lost, or stolen. By September 1992, more than 4,000 items worth about $7.6 million were on loan to Laboratory employees, mostly computer equipment. Most of the borrowed equipment was for home use and many borrowers were keeping it for lengthy periods--2 years or more was common. NASA now plans to reassess the Laboratory property system and has directed the Laboratory to do a complete inventory in 1994.

GAO found that: (1) there are major weaknesses in the JPL property management system; (2) JPL practices do not comply with NASA policies that restrict equipment loans and prohibit the purchase of equipment for the sole purpose of loaning it to employees; (3) JPL equipment loans have increased 40 percent in 2 years and, as of September 1993, equipment valued at $7.6 million was on loan to JPL employees; (4) about 96 percent of the loaned equipment was computer equipment and the remaining items included communications, recording, and scientific equipment; (5) JPL management believes that employees with loaned equipment perform additional unpaid work that exceeds the value of the borrowed equipment; (6) almost half of the loaned equipment was bought specifically to loan to employees and another 45 percent was retained for loaning after replacement of older equipment; (7) equipment loan requests are generally nonspecific and improperly authorized; (8) JPL equipment oversight and accountability is inadequate and does not comply with federal regulations; (9) JPL has lost over $5 million of NASA equipment in 2 years; (10) NASA is planning to reassess the JPL property system, require JPL to perform a complete inventory in 1994, and identify and correct inventory design and operation problems; (11) the JPL property control system does not properly identify or value the equipment in Caltech's possession; and (12) JPL and Caltech property control systems do not agree on the amount of NASA equipment in Caltech's possession.

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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