NASA OIG Wants NASA to Close IV&V
NASA OIG: NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation Program
“We found that by continuing to occupy and maintain the West Virginia facility, NASA is paying more than necessary in O&M expenses, which leaves the Agency with less funding to perform actual IV&V services on NASA software projects. We estimated the Agency could save as much as $9.7 million between FYs 2015 and 2018 if the IV&V Program took steps to reduce costs associated with the facility. In order to make additional funds available for review of mission-critical software, we recommended NASA analyze alternatives for reducing occupancy costs associated with the facility, including abandoning the facility and moving staff to an existing NASA Center or relocating the staff to a nearby office building that would cost significantly less. We determined that NASA was not legally obligated to pay O&M expenses associated with the building it currently occupies, but rather has chosen to pay these expenses over the last 20 years. In our judgment, continuing this arrangement does not make fiscal sense for NASA, particularly when the Agency has more projects needing IV&V services than the current budget can accommodate.”
why not Robert Byrd is dead now anyway
The NASAWatch headline is a little deceptive. The OIG did _not_ call for closing IV&V, the NASA facility in West Virginia, though as you point out that would be an eminently sensible thing to do. The OIG only proposed closing the IV&V _building_ at the UWV campus, which is owned by the university but for which NASA still pays all the O&M after many years. In reality most of the IV&V activities have moved to a nearby commercial office building, and the OIG was just pointing out that simply closing the NASA-built building and renting regular office space would save a bundle.
Yes if we can save some money let’s do it! Perhaps this will open the door to closing the entire facility??
Not unless you want to call the OIG and suggest it. (Yes, I’m serious.)
Hey, this is a pretty interesting IG report.
Charges to the IV&V program included $13,772 for honey baked ham for Student’s Day in the Park; $2,842 just for the overhead on the ham.
Pork lol
My first thought was: “How lucky SMAP, ICESat 2, GRACE-FO, and TDRS L were to avoid the impedance of IV&V,” but I’m open to re-education: Has anyone out there had a positive experience with IV&Vm where they really added value or caught a major software issue before a launch?