20 Years Ago Today: The Seeds of NASAWatch
Keith’s note: NASA Watch officially turns 20 on Friday, 1 April. It started in 1996 as “NASA RIF Watch”. The “RIF” was dropped when the threat of a RIF (Reduction in Force) under NASA Administrator Dan Goldin subsided. This is the news item I posted on the sci.space.policy USENET group on 28 March 1996 that pushed me to create a website (NASA RIF Watch) a few days later:
NASA is planning a RIF in Summer 1997
From: Keith L. Cowing
Date: Thurs, Mar 28 1996 12:00am
From a well-placed source at NASA HQ who participated in this meeting:
Mal Peterson (NASA HQ Comptroller’s Office) personally briefed NASA program managers (Centers and HQ) yesterday (27 March) and gave instructions for planning and implementing a RIF by Summer 1997, the reduction to be completed by October 1998, to a total complement level of 17,500, as called for by the President for the year 2000, to be completed by 1998.
Vugraphs were shown concerning “the value of fear in managing corporate-downsizing.” (That is a direct quote) They have statistics on the number of personnel supposed to be within retirement range and everyone will be encouraged to retire asap, though these numbers will not prevent a RIF. He strongly indicated that congressional backing would be soon forthcoming.
Contrast this with what NASA says about its people in the Current Strategic Plan:
“Our greatest strength is our workforce. We aggressively build a team of highly qualified individuals that is representative, at all levels, of America’s diversity. We foster a culture that is built on trust, respect, teamwork, communication, empowerment, and committment in an environment that is free of discrimination……”
Keith – 20 years in, what would you say is your central finding or observation?
As a reader, it’s easy to get lost in the daily issues on lack of open-ness, lack of planning or poor decision making. What does a veteran forum moderator see looking back on 20 years?
What do I see looking back? Well, for one thing, no matter how many examples of lack of transparency and bad decision making you may highlight, NASA really hasn’t adopted the changes it needs to make in order to continue functioning efficiently. It now routinely accepts that it will take decades to do something that a younger NASA could have done much faster. Yet on the other hand, NASA is probably the largest collection of smart, gifted, enthused, space explorers anywhere on Earth. Yet they are still burdened with a dysfunctional, byzantine, and tone deaf management and strategic planning infrastructure that is simply not up to the task for which they are responsible. As they used to say way back in WWII: SNAFU.
“Vugraphs were shown concerning “the value of fear in managing corporate-downsizing.””
In the intervening years, organizations have gotten very, Very good at disguising this intent under a veneer of HR and executive doublespeak. Laws to protect employees have been methodically and systematically circumvented.
I started visiting your site when Dan Goldin was Administrator. I know you have been hard on all of the Administrators to date, but I would love to know, with your perspective, who has been the best Administrator in your 20 years of critiquing, and why?
I guess you don’t spend as much time hanging out on the MSNBC Space Forum now as you did back then.
(Wait… is there even an MSNBC Space Forum anymore?)
I remember my supervisor back then telling us all not to worry about losing our jobs. More or less to the effect that anyone suggesting this had no idea what they were getting into. Funny – acknowledging we were so inefficient that we couldn’t efficiently fire people en masse.
He was right.
Keith, Happy 20th Birthday to NASAWatch and many more! Thanks for keeping us informed and forward thinking!