Congressional Interest in NASA Overseas Trip Spending
Letter from Rep. Wolf to NASA Regarding Attendance at the International Astronautical Congress
“In your June 15 response to me, you wrote, “As the NASA Administrator, I take my responsibility and accountability for use of taxpayer dollars in this area very seriously…” and you outlined your process for reviewing NASA-sponsored conferences exceeding $20,000 and non-NASA-sponsored conferences exceeding $100,000. That is why I was concerned to learn from the Web site NASAWatch.com that, “[sjources report that 50 or more NASA employees will be attending the IAC (International Astronautical Congress) meeting from 1-5 October in tourist-friendly Naples, Italy.”
NASA’s Delegation to the IAC, earlier post
Hoo-fah! It’s going to hit the proverbial fan now.
And whatever else he does, Bolden better not pass on the list of NASA sponsored papers to Wolf as justification for conference attendance. Most of them are fluff pieces (judging from the insipid titles), likely recycled from previous papers written to “justify” attendance at other
conferencesboondoggles at “tourist friendly” places in the past.We all know how this conference game works. They were just a little too obvious about it. Now that the light is turned on, they’ll scurry back into their hiding places until this blows over.
Good job in keeping these government servants honest, Keith!
Of course conferences are going to be held in “Tourist Friendly Areas.” You think anyone from Tokyo or Paris or Bonn would come to the US for a NASA conference hosted in SE DC or South Central LA.
Are people going to a conference or are they going to sight see?
Large conferences can’t be held in cities without significant hotel accommodations and facilities. Usually, that means there also is some tourist and/or business interest in such places. Hotels rise where people go frequently.
They should hold the conference in Minneapolis in the winter. Plenty of hotel rooms available there.
Anyone who attends is obviously a dedicated researcher and no further justification would be necessary.
Good idea. That’ll weed out the junketeers.
So if the conference were still in Italy, but whatever the Italian equivalent of Minneapolis is, you’d be OK with that?
Actually, I’ve noticed that a lot of conferences get held in places that are tourist destinations, but during the non-tourist season. This is a good way to get cheap function space; the hotels have a lot of empty hotel rooms in the off season and will cut deals to fill them.
Let’s look at it from the other side. If we assume that a given conferences is of value, then it is important for certain people to attend it — important to the industries involved and the world economy. However, attendance at these conferences is not cheap, by a long shot. So both the employers and the potential attendees probably require some sort of incentive, above the industry/company value, to be willing to pay to attend (the companies may pay airfare and hotels, but the attendees always manage to end up out of pocket too compared to having stayed home). Also, any city big enough to have sufficient hotel rooms and an airport with enough flights nearby is likely to be a tourist city anyhow, so you can’t escape it. You can hardly do a large conference in a small town that ‘s a two-hour car drive from the airport and hotel.
Of course they’re going to a conference. But the reality is, every place in the US that we’d consider a good spot for a conference would be considered a tourist attraction by foreigners. Conversely, every foreign location for a conference would be considered a tourist location by Americans, just due to sheer novelty.
If you’re hosting a conference in your country, you’re going to make sure it’s held in a location which represents well on your area. If you’re hosting a conference in India, it’s going to be held at a resort where the foreigners won’t get sick from the water and end up with liquid bowels for the duration of the trip. If you’re hosting a conference in Italy, you’re going to host it in an area which has plenty of hotel rooms and is easy to navigate.
Tourist cities have lots of hotel capacity which go unused during weekdays which is when conferences are held. If you’re charming on the phone, you can snag a suite at the Wynn in Vegas for $150 on a Wednesday night (I’ve done this before; the same room runs close to $2k on weekends). That’s cheaper than the Holiday Inn Express in Tuscaloosa. Which of the two cities is a better choice for an international conference drawing several thousand visitors? Which has more direct flights from international destinations? And which would be easier for an international visitor to get around?
Delete. –
“We all know…” a classic start for a statement by someone who has probably never been to the IAC, has no idea what kind of meeting it is, etc. And a rare disservice to the international space community for you, Keith.
Why is this a disservice? I have been to several IACs. Try again.
Keith, I was not suggesting that you had not been to IACs in the past. I know that you have been.
However, almost always when you “blow the whistle” there is good reason for it. In this case, if you are personally opposed to international communication, cooperation and US leadership, then you are right to blow the whistle on NASA’s tiny (percentage) participation in the IAC. However if not, then it is a disservice to the international space community because (as you know) the normal response for any bureaucrat to any kind of criticism is risk avoidance. Being hammered on by Senator Wolf could lead to any number of “self-inflicted wounds.” How can the Agency avoid criticism? Perhaps no one from NASA should attend the IAC? Perhaps, there should be no international travel at all for NASA or its contractors? (Irony intended, but applied a bit heavily…)
I would never suggest that every trip to every IAC by a NASA manager has been a good use of public funds; I know of a number of instances where an international technical expert from a NASA center did not get to attend because a manager bumped him or her off the “list of 50”. Improving the NASA process for choosing who goes to the IAC would be worthwhile windmill against which to tilt. However, if this instance of “blowing the whistle” leads NASA to a knee-jerk reaction such as reducing its participation to 40, or 20, or 10 individuals at the IAC, that is no service to the space program. The IAC is a useful and unique venue for the international space community to meet once each year: NASA should be there.
Most of the time people who get to go are allowed to go as a reward for something they did at work – not because they need to be there. I saw this with my own eyes and still hear about it all the time. NASA needs to stop allowing its employees treat these trips like vacations and simply refuse to allow them to add days or use vacation time while on travel. That would go a long way toward enforcing the notion that these are working trips not an excuse to relax at taxpayer expense.
And at some point, you put in rules and regulations that are so overbearing that the kinds of people who you really want sticking around say enough is enough and leave the organization, leaving you with employees who are sticking around only since they don’t have any other options.
The ability to use vacation time as an add-on to conference travel is a standard policy at the vast majority of companies, universities, and other technical institutions.
You fly all the way to Italy — wouldn’t you want to spend a day or two looking around while you’re there? You really think someone coming from Seoul to the AGU in San Francisco this year isn’t going to tack on a couple days and spend time (read: $$$) in Monterey, Big Sur, and Napa?
The purpose of the trip is work – not pleasure. NASA people often have a hard time understanding that.
Sometimes adding vacation to business travel can save money. Getting cheaper air fare by staying over a weekend is an obvious example. Personally, I’ve got a meeting and a conference next summer, both in Europe, and a week apart. Which makes more sense? I fly over for a week, then fly back only to fly over again eight days later? Or staying in Europe and taking a week of vacation in between?
I am confused about an earlier comment about “allow[ing] spouses/family members to get free lodging.”I’ve only seen this from the NASA contractor side, not inside NASA itself, but last time I checked, that was definitely not allowed. Adding vacation days to a business trip is, but the traveler has to pay any extra cost out of their own pocket. Unless NASA rules are very different from what NASA requires of contractors, claiming expenses for family members is certainly not allowed.
The real problem that several people have mentioned is using these conferences as an excuse for a vacation rather than an occasion for actual work. But rationing the number of trips isn’t a solution. As another post said, “Most of the people going are project managers who are awarding themselves for “good” work”.” Unfortunately, those same project managers are the ones who select which people get to go to which meetings. If project managers are only allowed a certain number of trips per year, how many would disapprove their own travel to allow a post-doc who could make a larger technical contribution to go instead?
I don’t think looking at the city where the conference is held necessarily works. The European Geophysical Union, for example, holds their annual meeting in Vienna and used to hold in in Nice. Both very “tourist-friendly” cities. I’ve seen graduate students stay in hostels and spend half an hour on public transportation to get to the conference center, so their grants could afford the trip. That sounds legitimate to me. At the same meetings, I’ve seen very senior people staying in five star hotels next door to the conference center and nominally attending presenting papers with very little real content. Same city, same meeting, but very different implications about how well the money was spent.
One possibility that occurs to me is requiring at least one journal publication per conference presentations. If it’s worth presenting, it’s probably worth publishing. If it isn’t worth presenting, why is someone going to a conference to present it? (Well, perhaps one publication per two presentations: Sometimes the preliminary work looks good, gets presented at a conference, but then doesn’t pan out.)
I have done the exact same on every one of my launch campaigns in Cape Canaveral. The company pays to fly me & my entire family (the other option is that I can fly home once a month for 3-4 months) to the cape, but there is NO EXTRA compensation above the govt. mandated per-diem rates for a single person.
Then when it is time to fly everyone home, I delay the return flight by a week to go on vacation. It costs the company (and the taxpayer) ZERO extra $$ for that since all costs for the extra stay come out of my pocket.
Why is that a problem?
The government gets special travel rates. Government employees regularly add time onto their trips – the travel costs for which are paid by taxpayers – to get an extra couple of vacation days. Everyone knows that – ergo these foreign trips are often used as incentives for employees.
Keith – what “special travel rates” are you talking about? Are you talking about government rates for hotels and cars? The government does not negotiate those directly or spend any money to get access to those rates – they are mere discounts provided by private companies in order to solicit business (basically its a hotel saying “hey government employees, we have rooms available at exactly the government approved hotel room per diem price, come stay with us!”). Government (and military) hotel rates are usually available to off duty employees at any time as a courtesy (or to drum up business).
Or are you talking about the contract pair airfare rates? I would argue they are more, not less, expensive than private tickets. That said, spouses, children, etc can’t fly at those rates, if they joined the government employee on travel, they’d be buying their plane ticket like a private citizen or any other mope through expedia or orbitz or whatnot. A government employee returning home on Friday or Sunday will cost the same amount, so what difference is it to anyone if they return home on Sunday if they want to stay two days at their personal expense?
“The government gets special travel rates. Government employees regularly
add time onto their trips – the travel costs for which are paid by
taxpayers – to get an extra couple of vacation days.”
kcowing, you really need to do your homework
“The government gets special travel rates.”
While it is true that the US government negotiates special rates with the
airlines, they are only for reimbursable travel, and NASA policy only allows
ticketing 3 days before travel, which makes them the most expensive possible
combination. Without fail, anyone can get better rates by buying earlier
and getting standard refundable tickets. Also, those rates are ONLY for
the government traveler on official US government business – any friends or
family members accompanying the traveler must buy their own tickets the regular
way, like everyone else (which almost always means cheaper).
“Government employees regularly add time onto their trips – the travel
costs for which are paid by taxpayers – to get an extra couple of vacation
days.”
It is true that a government traveler can extend a trip to attach vacation onto
it, but any cost over and above the cost of the work trip alone has to be paid
by the traveler, and vacation time must be used for the extra time (once the
conference is over). There are strict
rules about how soon you can travel before the conference and how long you can
stay afterwards before you must begin to use your own time.
There are many inane things about NASA travel that ought to be exposed, but you
are looking under the wrong rock.
For instance, why the 50 NASA Civil Servant limit?
That number is completely arbitrary and capricious. Why is the premier high-level
international meeting attended by thousands of worldwide experts limited to
only 50 NASA employees?
Why do some NASA employees consider this particular meeting
so important to the job they do that they take their own vacation time and pay
their own money to go (because they don’t make the 50-person cut)?
Why does NASA refuse to ticket FULLY REFUNDABLE tickets
until three days before travel, when they are the most expensive?
If you really want to save travel money you should cut off grants to all the NASA funded universities going to the conference. I checked through the technical program and there is a good representation from Alabama.
If you really want to save travel money you should cut off grants to all the NASA funded universities going to the conference. I checked through the technical program and there is a good representation from Alabama.
I am waiting for the CORRECT comment to come from Congress which is : Why in an agency with 15,000 people, with a dedicated mission of discovery and new ideas and informing the public of those ideas in order to drive industry, do you have only 50 papers (or maybe even a few less) at the largest gathering of people in the industry and scientific community able to understand the implication of that research? As Congress, considering the size and scope of NASA’s budget and research program, I would question why NASA isn’t putting out MORE conference quality research, not insisting they put out less because sending the researchers to the Conference is a waste of money. Think about how hard it will be for NASA to recruit quality academic researchers if we tell them they can only go to a conference every 5 years because we limit attendance and so they’ll just have to wait their turn. I think you’d find far less PhD’s accepting jobs with NASA, simply because they’d say that type of restriction would make them unable to effectively accomplish their job. This is not the GSA – NASA engineers and scientists are not bureaucrats on a boondoggle, they are researchers doing what researchers need to do in order to get their job done, sharing their ideas with other qualified researchers that understand them to push them to the next level.
This is much ado about nothing.
Think about how hard it will be for NASA to recruit quality academic
researchers if we tell them they can only go to a conference every 5
years because we limit attendance and so they’ll just have to wait their
turn.
Sounds like a good idea to me. If someone is considering joining NASA based on the number of boondoggles they will get per year, then they probably shouldn’t be hired in the first place.
I think you’d find far less PhD’s accepting jobs with NASA,
simply because they’d say that type of restriction would make them
unable to effectively accomplish their job.
Any PhD who claims they can’t do their job because they couldn’t go to this or that conference should be FIRED. They should get the papers from the conference proceedings like most everyone else in the industry.
The interaction that occurs at conferences is vital to researchers and leaders of engineering development in many fields. I would hope that anyone who attends a conference would make at least one significant presentation and attend numerous others, but for the largest space agency in the world to send 50 people to one of the world’s leading conferences on space is perfectly appropriate.
What would be nice is to see NASA clamp down on allowing employees to add days to their foreign trips unless there are specific work-related reasons to do so, not allow spouses/family members to get free lodging etc. Arriving a day or so early to deal with jet lag is just fine.
Rebecca; I generally agree with your points. However, I’d go one step further. Take a look at titles of the papers that are being presented. Very few of them are serious papers detailing research or advances. Most seem to be ‘fluff’; of no consequence. In the universities your abilities and your future are based on your publications and your research accomplishments. This does not appear to be the case in today’s NASA.
Littrow,
Your assertion makes big assumptions. You’re dismissing the content of papers that we’ve not yet seen, based on their titles alone. You may be absolutely right about “fluff,” but we can’t know that yet.
Steve
Rebecca,
Although I agree with your position in general, I would say that it’s not legitimate to refer to “an agency with 15,000 people” when making your argument. This conference is the International Astronautical Congress. What percentage of NASA’s “15,000 people” are doing work directly related to what the IAC conferences are generally presenting/discussing? Perhaps once we exclude those people who are not legitimate candidates for attending 50 people is a more reasonable limit, given that all IAC members will have access to the proceedings and papers, and those who do attend will be making trip reports (and in my opinion, anyone who doesn’t produce first rate trip reports should be denied opportunities for any later conferences). I, too, would like to see more NASA attendees, but sometimes appearances are even more important, and restricting, than the budget. And we don’t know what trade-offs for other issues resulted in the magic number of 50. With the big bad Wolf on the prowl, maybe we’re lucky to get anyone going.
Steve
Also, it is fair that the IAC travels locations.. it was held in Houston 10 years ago, and there was a lot of JSC attendance as a result. It can’t be held in Houston, or a location with a NASA center every year. So what is NASA to do, just boycott the other years? That’s absurd.
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NASA employees need to see, be seen, and be heard to maintain a high standing within the technical world. One of NASA’s main mission is education. NASA gives so much to universities (mandated by congress) and then to turn around and forbid its employees to attend conferences, is just absurd. How about we (taxpayers) limit the pork, travel expenses, staff, and wasteful spending by the not-so-bright politicians. Let NASA do what it still can before the entire Agency is abolished.
Spacer1966:So if the conference were still in Italy, but whatever the Italian equivalent of Minneapolis is, you’d be OK with that?
I don’t think there is an Italian equivalent of Minneapolis in the winter.
But if there was, anyone who wanted to go should be allowed to go after they have their head examined.
“an Italian equivalent of Minneapolis” in Italy would probably be a top ski resort. Try again 😉
Has anyone bothered to check how many NASA people went when the conference was in Minneapolis or the equivalent. I bet it was more (in Houston, in Vancouver) than the 50 going to Italy … the data simply doesn’t support the notion that this is any sort of boondoggle.
From Wolf letter: “If accurate, the cost of this travel and this level of participation [50 attendees] would certainly conflict with my May 22 letter warning that excessive conference spending is not appropriate. “
A lone Congressman demands the right to dictate how many representatives NASA sends to a major world conference, and insists that NASA first ask his permission? And threatens to slash the NASA budget if the agency does not concede? This is possibly the most egregious example of Congressional micromanagement I have ever seen.
Wolf’s views on NASA collaboration, with China in particular, are so extreme as to be unique even in his own party. For the GOP to give him what amounts to absolute power over NASA policy based solely on his personal whims is both irresponsible and counterproductive.
Daniel,
Well said. Of course, your assertion assumes that the GOP gives a !#$% about NASA one way or another. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that they see NASA as anything other than a candidate for spending reduction.
Steve
Most of the people going are project managers who are awarding themselves for “good” work. That kind of defeats the idea of serious technical exchange right there (not to mention all the restrictions on international tech transfer).
I do agree with the idea that Mr. Wolfe and the IG also need to look at university and contractor participants who are attending to report under government funded grants or contracts. The last ilooked, thetaxpayer dollars used to pay for university or contractor travel are just as green as those used to pay civil servant travel.
What source do you have to quote “Most of the people are going are project managers who are awarding …” That seems like a heck of an assumption on your part.
I saw the list of papers from NASA and their authors. I know who the project managers are. I would be willing to change “most” to a “significant percentage (if not most)”.