New NASA Governance Structure Under Development

It will be interesting to see what comes of this. NASA needs to be reorganized as the current system isn't working the way it should. Will the centers be willing to give up some of their powers? I sincerely doubt it.

"The only thing constant in life is change."

- Francois de la Rochefoucauld

...and the more things change, the more they stay the same....

Ooooh .... a new management and organizational scheme! I'm all tingly!!

Don't tell me these guys don't know how to excite America...

As a pal of mine in Huntsville says, "We are but one re-org away from peak efficiency!"

Hey Doc, since they didn't have time for another committee, this is the next best thing. I feel a tingle going right up my pants leg.

Symbolism over substance.

pspudis said:

Ooooh .... a new management and organizational scheme! I'm all tingly!!

Don't tell me these guys don't know how to excite America...

Thanks. I needed a laugh this afternoon.

Until actual leadership arrives at NASA, one is likely just to get more of the same rearranging of the deck chairs and never ending re-planning of great achievements, especially at the "research" centers.

Perhaps one day someone at the top will go back and figure out that all those wonderful accomplishments NASA loves to brag about from the past occurred when people got ideas and were allowed to follow them without having to go beg for funding from some overstaffed program office and then either wait for years or have their work overseen so as to not miss any precious milestones.

Not holding my breath for anything of substance.

Hamptonguy seems to think NASA can be run like SpaceX or a university physics department or some black agency like in the Transformers movie. No way. When $18 billion (102.6 dB$) goes in, management reports and budget projections must come out. Congress insists.

The days of Apollo are long gone. No longer is there an unquestioned mandate to do the work we do, equivalent to the "beat the Russians" challenge. So the notion that Congress will just push a stack of money across the table and say "Make us proud" is at best a pleasant memory.

In this context, leadership at NASA is handcuffed. An internal reorganization might improve efficiency or management visibility but will not uncover a pot of money that enables everything to be completed on the current budget. The only thing that will release NASA from these doldrums is leadership from the White House with $ support from Congress.

The issue is that the Centers right now have no authority. All of the authority flows through the MDAA's to the programs and the Center Directors' opinions are only recommendations. The Centers want to be back under the Mission Directorates (used to be Divisions) so they are in the chain of authority. Right now, a project or program at a Center calls all the shots, determines who gets what FTEs and funding, and whether or not the program is going to follow institutional requirements. The Centers have no mechanism to enforce anything, they are just bystanders. If a program decides to withdraw 50 FTEs from Engineering, tough luck. Someone has to figure out how to cover those employees and there is absolutely nothing the Center can do except negotiate with someone who holds all the cards. Another failed concept by Dr. Griffin. NASA may never recover from the damage done by this man. He makes Goldin look like a wonder boy.

Possum,

I disagree. The Centers are an administrative entity, not a programmatic/functional one. Under the current governance model we have somewhat of a clear programmatic management chain and I like it that way. Interjecting the Centers into that chain will just muddy things up without making much of a contribution programmatic decisions. As it is now, the Centers still interject themselves into budgetary and workforce processes in an effort to protect their own administrative "rice bowls". Projects often end up funding people they don't want and can't use, directly or indirectly. The lack of innovation and rapid decision-making in NASA is often decried. Formally injecting the Centers back into the decision-making process is not going improve that. There are times when I wish I could pack my whole team off to some off-site warehouse, set up a "skunk works" soup-to-nuts operation without all the Center's overhead to contend with and support.

greytguy - let me give you some points to chew on related to present project-driven structure at NASA related to R&T projects:

No or little FTE or WYE allotment by project managers for young employee training because the project is only concerned with project goals.

Related to the last point, little ability to train young employee in one area of expertise because they have to be spread among different projects since the projects rarely provide enough FTE to cover them fully.

Lack of concern by projects for core competency maintenance and development - the project is only interested in project goals and are short-sighted with respect to the big picture at NASA and the future.

Project PIs having too much authority to determine what technical issues are important and imposing narrow-minded views of where research dollars shoul go (especially has been prevalent on the R&T side of the house).

Senior employees wasting time arguing with project managers over 0.1 !! FTE and WYE.

We need a better balance between project and line authority at NASA. It does not have to swing back to the old way we did things but right now the project-driven structure overweight is a major thorn in many of our sides. And I cannot say it has resulted in improvement to our end products.