Growing Impact of Travel Restrictions
American Astronomical Society Decries Impact of Federal Travel Restrictions on Science
“The American Astronomical Society (AAS) today expressed deep concern about the U.S. government’s new restrictions on travel and conference attendance for federally funded scientists. Enacted in response to the budget sequestration that went into effect on March 1st, the policies severely limit the ability of many researchers to meet with collaborators and to present their latest results at professional meetings. The leadership of the AAS is especially worried about the restrictions’ deleterious effects on scientific productivity and on scientists’ and students’ careers.”
Keith’s tnote: If you ask NASA how much they spend on travel in a given year they can’t tell you. If you ask them how much these new travel restrictions to save they can’t tell you that either. They are just making this up as they go.
Well yeah travel is poorly managed, but OTOH, AAS is full of crap. They want the conference fees. They NEED the conference fees
If you ask NASA how much they spend on travel in a given year they can’t tell you.
In my company, they can tell you how much they spend on travel each year to the penny. Because it matters to the stockholders.
I guess NASA thinks it doesn’t matter to the taxpayers how much they spend on travel.
“If you ask NASA how much they spend on travel in a given year they can’t tell you.”From Space News, March 25 2012:
“The agency spent about $79 million on travel in 2012, Beutel said.”
“If you ask them how much these new travel restrictions to save they can’t tell you that either.”
According to Space News:
“NASA thinks it can save at least $10 million in 2013 by sharply curtailing agency participation in conferences, spokesman Allard Beutel said.”
So, roughly, travel is about 0.5% of the NASA budget, and they expect that the travel restrictions will cut that figure by 13%.
That does not jive with what PAO says. They say $79 million. Sometimes they say they do not know. They are only guessing at the savings since the rules whereby travel is approved/denied are still in flux.
At the lowly researcher end of NASA, we have to keep careful track of how much we spend on travel. I have a bit of trouble believing that the numbers are not known at higher levels, too.
Keith,
You don’t have to ask the NASA PAO. It’s public record in the 2013 budget estimates (which also include the 2012 actuals).
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/659…
Hit Ctrl+f to search. Enter ‘travel’ as the search term.
Some highlights:
Travel by Headquarters: $12.4M (pg. CAS-34)
Travel by the OIG: $1.1M (pg. IG-4)
Total Agency travel: $76M (pg. SD-10)
Travel by NASA consultants $0.5M (pg. SD-23)
It took me less than five minutes to find this information.
That does not jive with what PAO says. They say $79 million. Sometimes they say they do not know. They are only guessing at the savings since the rules whereby travel is approved/denied are still in flux. And of course, then there is contractor travel which is not tracked in the same way that civil servant travel is tracked.
AeroSC: “It’s public record in the 2013 budget estimates (which also include the 2012 actuals). http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/659660… …Total Agency travel: $76M (pg. SD-10)”
kcowing: “That does not jive with what PAO says. They say $79 million.”
Looking at the footnote on page SD-10, $76M for 2012 travel is listed as “total estimated obligations” (estimated as of the time that the president’s 2013 budget document was written, I assume). That is reasonable close to the final value of $79M that the PAO quoted.
How much will actually be saved is anybody’s guess, depending on how much they actually end up cutting.
If you are referring to Civil Servant travel, yes they can (or should). All Govt travel gets reported under one Commitment Item (2100) in the financial system- very easy to roll up & report on Agency-wide. Contractor travel is another ballgame- not as easy to capture data on.