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Commercialization

OIG Slams Both NASA and ACES Contractor

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 4, 2014
Filed under , , , , ,

Review of NASA’s Agency Consolidated End-User Services Contract, NASA OIG
“NASA’s lack of adequate preparation prior to deploying the ACES contract together with HP’s failure to meet important contract objectives has resulted in the contract falling short of Agency expectations. We attribute these shortcomings to several factors, including a lack of technical and cultural readiness by NASA for an Agency-wide IT delivery model, unclear contract requirements, and the failure of HP to deliver on some of its promises. In general, these issues fall into two categories: (1) issues related to the Agency’s overall IT governance and (2) management and problems specific to the ACES contract.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

22 responses to “OIG Slams Both NASA and ACES Contractor”

  1. gelbstoff says:
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    Perhaps part of the problem is that an agency wide IT model may not be the correct model for an agency like NASA.

    • sunman42 says:
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      Heresy! Burn the unbelievers at the stake! They shall not “stovepipe” solutions that actually take real security and mission success into account!

  2. Richard H. Shores says:
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    Having worked for government agencies in the past, I have seen this happen all too often when it comes to IT. And it was always swept under the rug and nobody was held accountable. Sound familiar?

  3. Anonymous says:
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    Judging from the numbers in the OIG report, the ACES contract to date has come out to $3,549 per NASA employee per year. ($169M to date, 17,847 employees, from Dec. 2010 to Aug. 2013). I never could figure out since back in the day with ODIN, and now with ACES, just where NASA was putting over $10,000 per employee every three years, the time period between “refreshes” and getting new PCs.

    This rate is actually typical and a 3K/year benchmark is considered par for the course for federal agencies thinking in terms of “seats”.

    Worse case, thinking about everything that comes with these contracts and what it would cost a business, I can never seem to get passed about 1/3rd of the amount. (Higher commercial rates, for in-place setup, boku server space, equivalent internet speeds, wifi, security/firewalls, typical software load, all email stuff, troubleshooting, “gold service”, 3 year warranty, a new unit every 3 years, and repeat, etc.)

    And you would think volume would make it even less!

    My suspicion has always been that most of the contract value does not end up in users PC’s and user support. It’s an ill-described contract in this sense. Perhaps as agencies could never really get away showing the real labor spent where it’s really spent? It’s all mostly security and configuration control behind the scenes – labor and such spent to assure everyone is on the same page, and that PC’s are slowed to a crawl once a day for updates, under guise of, you guessed it, saving money!

    • Lowell James says:
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      Are your numbers of employees accurate for computer support? The 17,847 employees might be accurate for NASA civil servants but I think all contractors sitting within the NASA facilities are also covered under the computer support contract. In that case it is really more like 75000 employees (ballpark guess).

  4. Scott Darpel says:
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    Never though I would miss ODIN! My issue was that they switch specs between when I ordered, and when they delivered, and no one seemed to care. I picked my seat because it was advertised to come with a 9-cell, ~9 hour battery. When I got it, it was a 6-cell battery. But, them being helpful, explained that I could purchase a 9-cell battery! Secondly, the spec sheet provided to our division just had total ram, not configuration (4gb, not 2x 2gb). My division person paid the ~$50 for the 4gb upgrade (I crunch a lot of stats). When I got it, it had 6gb….hmmm. Well, again being helpful, they explained that the new spec sheet listed 2x2gb, so, in fact, they replaced one of the 2gb chips with a 4gb chip, hence 6gb……yeah. Again, I am free to buy another. My question: so, you removed the 2gb chip – did my division get reimbursed for that? Where is it? We bought it. Oh well…..

    • gelbstoff says:
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      I had some similar problems, but not as bad. My main issue is not getting administrative privileges – I need them for my work. Clearly, I am just a NASA scientists with two advanced degrees….I can be trusted with managing millions in program funds and equipment, but not with the management of my computer! Fortunately, I was able to find alternatives.
      The most fun I had was during a stint at HQ. I asked the contract to install some software I needed for data analysis. The contractor got bent out of shape because the software was not listed, or certified etc.. The funny thing is that this is a software package developed, supported, and distributed for free by a NASA group. I ended up installing the software myself as the contractor looked over my shoulder. He was a good guy trapped in a bad system. Bottom line, NASA is a premier R&D agency. It needs computer support to match. I have not read the OIG report, but I suspect is not well informed.
      G.

  5. Skinny_Lu says:
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    I wonder how much time and effort is spent accommodating the Apple Macs within a PC based network. I know in my directorate, about 10% of the employees have Macs. They are always having problems with Outlook, Calendar and forget about running any CAD applications. But, hey, them guys and gals love their Macs!

    • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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      That’s funny; 26% of the group I’m in uses Mac OS X and 10% uses Linux as their host OS. The only problems we run into are when we have shoehorn legacy code provided by other NASA sites onto a Windows platform. The guys running Windows and CAD apps seem to be doing fine, some even wish PTC Creo would get ported into *NIX. We’re not the type of people to use MS Office all day because we actually have mission-critical work to do.

      • Skinny_Lu says:
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        You have people that run PTC Creo in a Mac? I’d like to see that. In what center do you work? At KSC, all attempts I’ve seen by those with Macs resulted in utter failure.

        • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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          As far as I know, we don’t have anyone at JSC running PTC Creo on a Mac, but we’ll test it out and go from there. At one point, PTC Creo mentioned being optimized for AMD GPUs and we’ll test it out. If we do get it working, I’ll be sure to let you know.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            Hello P.A.
            Thanks for the well thought out responses, both of them. The PC/Mac battle will rage long after I am gone. Ha. I am really interested in the PTC Creo running on a Mac because there are a few people I work with who have Macs who cannot do any CAD work, which ends up coming to me or other PC users. I don’t understand why management allows that, “they have a Mac, so they cannot open the model for review…” If you do that, I will buy you lunch when you visit us at the Cape.

      • Skinny_Lu says:
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        My question still stands. How much extra does it cost to have a PC based network also cater to Macs? Believe me, I know PCs have a fair share of problems, but the support for the network gets complicated, and presumably more expensive to accommodate those who *like* to have a Mac. We also have plenty of “mission critical” systems and we require remote access to customer’s sites as well as other NASA centers to exchange engineering data and CAD models. It is always the Mac folks who can’t connect and have to jump through extra hoops (more support), more so than anyone of us with PCs. I have a co-worker who claimed, his Mac “could run” the ProE (now Creo) CAD application. No it didn’t. As much as he tried (super smart guy) it never did work. He still has his Mac but uses a shared PC workstation to do CAD work. Don’t get me wrong, I have an iPad at home and love it. I just don’t think that having the work network supporting both platforms is cost effective. But again, some people love their Macs, so yes, we spend more money so they can have them.

        • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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          NASA and ACES enjoy all-in-one solutions that they can buy because they’re simpler to use. Better and cheaper (even open-source) solutions exist for whatever infrastructure you need/want, but the government generally stays away from something they can’t pay to get support for. Generally speaking, the problems we face are a direct result of building an infrastructure mainly intended for PC’s and then modified to accommodate Mac and Linux machines (and I have seen ACES do absolutely horrible jobs in getting people a Linux workstation). I personally come from a HEP background (ATLAS experiment at CERN) where Linux is used as the core infrastructure and they happily accommodate Windows/*NIX/OS X users with very few issues.

          More bluntly, if you build an infrastructure that’s highly geared to PC’s and have people that don’t use a PC, they’re not gonna have a good time.

          Coming back to Creo, I’ve heard of people running it under a Windows VM’s and there’s several people online claiming to run it without issues; all mixed results.

          At the end of the day, all computers are tools. I use a Mac for cross-platform development and testing. And it’s easy, I have compiled plenty of software packages for *NIX as easily as I have compiled them for Windows and everyone is happy. I even use our local HPC for batched jobs and parallelization and everyone benefits from it.

          To date, I have had no issues dealing with NASA, ACES, other sites, remote servers, no issues with VPN, and so on.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            Correct you are! “build an infrastructure, highly geared to PCs, people with Macs are not going to have a good time” That was my point. Finally, you are what I call, a “power user”, most people with Macs are not. So they struggle along and then complain they get no good support from ACES. It gives the rest of us a chance to make fun of their problems. “if you had a real computer…” =)
            Let me know how the Creo works out… I believe you will need a different mouse, a single button Mac mouse will not do the job.

          • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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            Alas, I am also one of those power users with several no-button, multi-touch mice. 🙂

          • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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            It’s not just Macs though, we have a small contingency of people with Linux machines (also power users, like myself) and they generally have a harder time dealing the infrastructure, but most often ACES. I think ACES @ JSC has 1 Linux guy, but for a while we had none…

          • Phyiscs Administrator says:
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            I ran Creo 2 (on a mid-2012 Mac Pro with OS X 10.9); works fine on smaller files (see attached joystick); Windows has a conniption fit on the larger models (attached pic of Lab) which I would attribute to poor GPU drivers belonging to VMWare Fusion (probably the same across all VM suites).

            So, to sum it all up – Creo 2 will run in a VM (in Mac/Linux/Windows), but you’ll be very limited in terms of capability. If your Mac users need to do CAD on a regular basis, they would probably be able to get away with most tasks by running it in a VM; alternatively they can run Creo 2 under Windows (natively) in Bootcamp.

            Sorry for the duplicates…

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            Thanks, PA.
            This is just about what I expected. While it is technically possible to run Creo 2 on a Mac, practically, it does not work very well. My colleague was able to run (Wildfire 5) in his Mac but it would very frequently freeze for no apparent reason. As far as large files, he did not even get that far. (Original ProE, Wildfire and now) Creo is a memory hog and it does not even run well on PCs so, if one has a Mac, don’t even bother.
            Thanks again for trying it.

    • An. Emperor Penguin says:
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      It is really hard to maintain a level response with such a ridiculous comment. The more relevant question is what is the cost and effort associated with using CREO and other flawed Windows based applications? CREO is a terrible application and their continuing re-branding and endless training is a reflection of that. I’ve taught CAD in the past and I won’t even touch it, it’s simply a waste of time.

      But like most minimal return and expensive things at NASA, its use will continue. The current Windows implementation is no exception, if this OIG report doesn’t spell it out.

      There is a reason that NASA waited years before deploying Windows 7, and the same will be true for Windows 8 or whatever it is called. You may want to check into those transition difficulties and get back to us. Security vulnerabilities aren’t cheap.

      • Skinny_Lu says:
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        Hello A.E.Penguin,
        As you probably already know, NASA selected Pro Engineer as the CAD system for the agency. A lot of people were dismayed because they believed there were better products out there. I’ve been around NASA for a while, before CAD or even desktop computers existed. Not for nothing, but I used the very FIRST INTERNET, in the whole world. It was called “newsgroups” and we had to log in a VAX machine to access this bulletin board-type comment utility where people could discuss sports, science, hobbies, etc. All the users were located in other government or university sites. I met and developed several virtual relationships with people with common interests. It was a great time back then but I digress… From what I’ve heard, Solidworks or NX are much better CAD systems. We have many issues with STEP file transfers back and forth between our customers and other NASA centers. A lot of information is lost when a model is converted to step and back to another CAD program. I would like to have something else, but NASA is married to ProE, Wildfire and now Creo. We “hate” each other but we still have to live together, till death do us apart. Of course, I’m just a mechanical guy who uses Creo as the tool my employer has provided for me. Please don’t hate. =)

  6. John Michael says:
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    We here at NASA have a lot of the blame. You want elevated privileges ask for it. There is a process in place for that. You want 3rd party software loaded, if you are a genius, then load it yourself. The contract is what it is, and the contractor is fulfilling the contract. Yes there are a lot of smart workers we all work with, but there are 90% of the other crowd that don’t know how to clear temporary internet files. Patches are pushed out on Tuesday nights. Keep your computer on and you will get patched that night and you won’t have to be patched during the day. Most of this goes back to whoever was responsible for writing a vague, gap filled contract, without specific requirements. If your phone was ordered wrong then guess who is at fault, the person who ordered it. If you wanted a bright shiny computer that “YOU” wanted and the center decided that a regular computer is what they were willing to pay for then get over it. We hear at NASA have this elitist attitude. I believe the intent of the contract was to save money by standardizing as much as POSSIBLE. They are cutting our budget not increasing it. Why don’t we at NASA work together and find out better ways to do things, under this contract, rather than saying I’m special and I want white table cloth service, or I don’t want to walk to the other room and get a piece of paper I printed from my room. Waaaaaaa. Most of the gaps can be filled if we let ACES know what the gaps are. Quit complaining and take action to make this contract better so we can have more money to spend on the things that matter to NASA, and to our NASA enthusiasts all over the world.