NASA Procurement

In recent years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has experienced a variety of development and performance problems with expensive space hardware. These problems have been a primary impetus behind the mounting Congressional pressures for NASA to improve its procurement practices. NASA has partly or fully implemented all but one of the eight key procurement management improvement initiatives it was working on in June 1993. Some were developed slowly and implemented quickly or achieved goals ahead of schedule. GAO questions whether some of the initiatives will be fully effective as a result of planning and implementation problems. Specifically, (1) the proposed contractors' liability policy will be hard to administer, may produce higher contract prices, and could harm subcontractors who are unwilling or unable to risk increased liability; (2) the potential effect of the proposed contractor liability policy on small and disadvantaged businesses has not been evaluated; and (3) the policy guidance for the training of contracting officers' technical representatives is incomplete.

GAO found that: (1) NASA has partially or fully implemented all but one of its eight key procurement management improvement initiatives; (2) the initiatives include establishing a new award fee policy, increasing contractor liability for defective items and inadequate performance, establishing a standardized data set for reporting specific contractor performance measures, reducing the number and value of unpriced contract changes, minimum training requirements for contracting officers' technical representatives (COTR), achieving small and disadvantaged business goals, communicating with industry representatives about procurement issues and concerns, and testing methods to reduce the time and effort applied to the majority of NASA contracting actions; (3) some of the initiatives have partially achieved or exceeded their cost-reduction or schedule goals; and (4) other initiatives may not be fully effective due to planning and implementation problems which include potentially higher contract costs, the lack of clear and complete guidance, and subcontractors' potential unwillingness or inability to participate in NASA procurements due to increased liability.

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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