Sean O’Keefe: 9 Questions

Keith’s note: Several weeks ago I asked NASA Adminstrator Sean O’Keefe if he’d be willing to answer some questions. The occasion was his first aniversary on the job. He agreed to do so.

In phrasing these questions, I sought to put aside those topics which had already been asked multiple times (Space Station Costs, etc.) and focus on issues that have been raised by NASA Watch readers (in one way or another) over the past year. The questions are presented below exactly as I put them to O’Keefe. With the exception of a sanity check by NASA Deputy Administrator Fred Gregory, Sean O’Keefe answered these questions by himself without circulating the text around official internal NASA channels. As such, what you see below is 100% Sean O’Keefe — Keith Cowing, Editor, NASA Watch

1. The “Vision” thing: One of the first complaints that members of the space community (inside and outside of NASA) had about you was that there was an apparent lack of “vision” on your part when it came to running NASA – something that many saw as a reflection of the Bush Administration’s view towards NASA as well. Many would like to see a mandate of some sort wherein NASA is set off to do something (i.e. go somewhere).

At a recent meeting of Senior Executive Service personnel at NASA HQ you made reference to the last time NASA sought a mandate from the White House (in this case President Bush’s father). This was, of course, the Space Exploration Initiative in the late 1980s. The net result of that effort was an expansive program proposed (somewhat half heartedly) by NASA to send humans to Mars for many hundreds of billions of dollars – one that would clearly require a national mandate. With regard to such mandates, you told the SES attendees that NASA has “tried such an approach once before”, that it had failed, and that this Administration was justifiably leery of NASA doing so again.

Curiously, in comments reported several weeks ago in a Maine newspaper you seemed to be suggesting that exciting days might lie ahead for NASA: “[O’Keefe] said he has been given a mandate by the Bush administration to “get back to the roots” and to recapture the entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit for which the space agency was once renowned.” And that “the president and vice president both would like to see the space agency recapture the elements of the late 1950s through the early 1970s, when the space program captured the imagination of the American public.”

Q: What is the Bush Administration’s long-term vision for NASA? Clearly management reform and cost accountability are at the core of its near-term vision, but is there ever going to be a destination or large scale challenge wherein such a retooled NASA sets its sights upon once again? Or is NASA’s future one wherein it focuses on a grouping of smaller, more focused programs?

Sean O’Keefe: The Vice President regularly observes that most decisions made in any Administration have a great bearing on the tools available to succeeding administrations to implement policy. With that philosophy in mind, we’re embarked on a space exploration strategy to build capacity and capability to enable any mission objective informed by science and discovery agendas. In other words, we want to build the capability today to pursue any destination tomorrow that may be in our collective national interest to pursue. That requires, for example, that we beat the technical obstacles and limitations that exist today which presently preclude us from going anywhere quickly and permit humans to survive the experience.

We’ve developed an integrated strategy for space across the Enterprises using a stepping stone approach which sets a foundation and builds on the next set of capabilities increasing our ability to conduct progressively more complex missions. The President’s FY04 budget reflects this comprehensive strategy for programs to aggressively build capabilities to enable ambitious missions in the future.

The preamble to the question properly alludes to the renewed management discipline and accountability emphasis at NASA to focus on these objectives. All programs must contribute to NASA’s three mission areas: to understand and protect the home planet; the explore the universe and search for life; and to inspire the next generation of explorers …. as only NASA can. These are very ambitious goals, but if we stay dominantly focused on their accomplishment, we’ll enable a broad range of mission opportunities that are merely a dream today.

2. OneNASA: Shortly after you arrived at NASA you began to speak of a concept you called “One NASA”. The idea was to try and change the long-standing culture of competition between NASA’s Field Centers so that all NASA employees worked toward a common goal. To use the popular term, you were looking to knock down the “stovepipes” that each center had erected over the years.

Over the past year your initial “OneNASA” idea has become much more formalized. However, in terms of concrete changes, to date OneNASA has only a handful to show: a few senior center-to-center personnel transfers; a unified email naming plan, a standard Powerpoint template for all NASA presentations, and an RFP for an expansive yet vaguely described approach to website integration.

Q: Is this all that we can expect from “OneNASA”? What specific implementations of this concept lie ahead? You have expressed little enthusiasm for the current ‘lead center’ approach. Can you site an example of how programs will be run in the future and how will this affect the way Centers are staffed, managed, and budgeted for?

Sean O’Keefe: “OneNASA” is a more a reflection and statement about the culture of the agency. There are a few subtle symbols of this emphasis, as outlined in the preamble to this question, but the more important evidence of this culture shift is the integrated program strategy we’re implementing across the agency’s capabilities to achieve objectives. Our greatest accomplishments have resulted from the application of seemingly different capabilities to achieve an entirely different outcome than what any one, single, enhanced capability could ever produce.

In this sense, a close cooperation between enterprises is essential to leverage capabilities — Biological and Physical Research drives so much of how we use space flight capability; Earth Science and Space Science research and technology applications are inextricably linked for different missions, but comparable platforms; Aerospace Technology is leading the development of new ISTP space transportation assets for Space Flight operations to support the science objectives; aeronautics advances that enhance the safety and security of the flying public have great bearing on new space flight designs; and Education and Safety initiatives have a relationship to everything we do across the agency; and on and on. As such, there is little that one enterprise and one center is responsible for that doesn’t have a relationship to some other on-going activity around the agency in support of the three NASA mission areas. The result of this coordination and cooperation will always be greater than the arithmetic sum of the parts contributing.

But “OneNASA” is also about changing the errant notion that one center’s gain has to result in another center’s loss. Competition is a good thing — but not when it creates a mindset among all of us in public service that this is a zero sum game and there must be a winner and loser. Centers which exhibit a capacity to enhance and develop core competencies may be responsible for the larger systems integration efforts across the agency’s capability. That isn’t at another Center’s expense — it’s an important role to assure that we bring our best talent to bear on given challenges. There is no inconsistency in the strategy to competitively select the best approach to achieve an objective, then work collaboratively across the agency to carry it out.

Enhanced quality of common support services across the agency is also evidence of “OneNASA.” It is the part that most folks will immediately notice. We spend more than 15% of our resources on Information Technology related systems. We’re trying to get the most yield from this investment to make information readily available for decision making — instead of continued investment to build bridges between incompatible systems. For example, there will be an impact on everyone when the Integrated Financial Management Program is implemented. But currently, the reviews from around the agency are mixed — largely because the system is different and we’re all naturally suspicious of uniformity. This is an understandable human reaction to anything “new” which affects the conduct of an organization. Nonetheless, this can’t be an excuse for inaction. This “OneNASA” initiative will permit us all to have sorely needed, higher confidence in the data that serves all our functions. It will be timely, accurate, responsive and substantially less expensive to operate than the multitude of incompatible systems we currently operate.

3. Freedom to Manage: Over the past decade NASA has endured more than its fair share of management fads, mantras, and reorganization attempts: TQM, ISO 9000, Faster-Better-Cheaper, Red Team/Blue Team, Zero Base Review, Strategic Restructuring Review – and, of course, “Reinventing Government”. All of this was flavored with a sprinkling of RIF threats and buyouts. The net result after a decade of managerial tumult is mixed. Now NASA has embraced yet another management theme “Freedom to Manage aka “F2M” – NASA’s localized implementation of the President’s “Management Agenda”, a plan you helped to draft while at OMB.

To date F2M has mostly been a number of proposals which would make the management of human resources more flexible than has been the case in the past (see http://f2m.nasa.gov/progress.htm).

Q: Can the NASA civil service and contractor workforce expect more change in the way programs are managed in the years ahead – or is more stability on the Horizon? Can you cite specific examples of how things will no longer be done at NASA?

Sean O’Keefe: “Freedom to Manage” is a concept the President initiated to encourage all of us to question why we do things the way we do. So often, we attribute stupid ways of doing business to some unspecified legal limitation or some untitled rule. On examination, we often find that we have the means to get rid of the impediments to doing business and efficient operations and it rarely requires changing the law or significantly changing the rules of good government. Often it turns out that some stupid practices emerge from the unintended consequence of enforcing a standard. No one intended that folks with a NASA badge be denied access to any NASA Center unless that Center originated the badge — but that’s the way the “rule” was implemented until the inconsistency was noted and we changed it. Somewhere in our agency history an excessive control mentality prompted us to institute “timekeepers” throughout the agency. That practice suggested we don’t trust each other to be professional — and nothing could be further from the truth, so we dispensed with that “control freak” policy. And we shouldn’t be surprised to find out that this practice is still going on somewhere around the agency –there’s always someone who doesn’t get the memo — but it needs to stop. When we find such policies, we all need to point them out, otherwise, we keep tolerating that which we think doesn’t make sense.

So, a good part of the “Freedom to Manage” initiative is to encourage folks to identify practices we consider annoying, inefficient, ineffective, or just plain dumb. Once identified, there is often a remedy. Now, sometimes there is a good reason, a larger imperative that justifies some consequence on cost effectiveness or efficiency — small and minority business preference in contracting may have initial consequences of additional expense, but often yield longer term improvements for larger public policy gains for entrepreneurship, equity, and new, smarter ways to do business. As a public, we have concluded this is a desirable goal and we’re prepared to do more to achieve it. In such cases, raising questions about the consequences is useful if for no other reason than to remind ourselves of the larger, more important objectives we seek to attain. One person’s idea of a dumb rule may be another’s idea of sound public policy — OK, but let’s rediscover what it is that prompts such mixed reaction and either reaffirm the policy or change it.

Much of the inefficiency we tolerate comes from folklore, urban legend or reasons folks have long forgotten. In those cases, “Freedom to Manage” is a forum to identify the symptom, find the source or cause of the action, and develop a collective decision to correct it by changing the rule, regulation, practice or, in some case, even the law. So in this regard, we should always be on the lookout for ways to change the way we do business if it serves a better outcome. And use the informal process we’ve constructed to enjoin those issues and solve them. There isn’t an office for “F2M” — our Chief of Staff, Courtney Stadd is leading a group of folks coordinating these issues, sorting the laundry lists of emerging ideas. They are hard working professionals — with day jobs! — from all around the agency committed to fixing those rules we think lead to bad practices. So, we shouldn’t aspire to “stability,” as suggested in the question, if this perpetuates practices we consider mindless.

Again, this is not a top-down driven exercise. The good ideas emerging from the Freedom to Manage forum come from across the agency where programs are managed, research is being conducted and science is pursued. This is where the real impact of organization practice and convention is felt most acutely. To continue progress, we all have to participate. Whining and grousing does nothing to fix the problem and often it isn’t even therapeutic. Imagine what we can do when we all help find solutions in addition to highlighting problems.

4. People: As mentioned above, NASA’s civil service and contractor workforce has had to endure a decade of constrained budgets, layoffs, and buyouts – and the negative effect this has often had on their morale and productivity. As a direct result of these activities NASA has lost critical skills and has failed to adequately recruit a new generation of employees. Moreover, you often mention that a third of the NASA workforce is eligible to retire within the next 5 years. Left unchecked all of these factors could conspire to leave NASA less capable of carrying out its mandate at a time when you seek to reinvigorate the agency. Add outsourcing to the mix and a lot of uncertainty could result.

Q: How are you addressing the interlinked issues of skill mix, retirement, recruiting, and mentoring? Will NASA be mounting recruitment campaigns, buyouts, and alternate employment approaches – if so when will they start? As NASA moves down the OneNASA path, will there be civil service downsizing and outsourcing to the private sector as duplicative efforts at multiple field centers are dealt with?

Sean O’Keefe: NASA is hardly unique in our challenge to recruit and retain well trained, competent, professional colleagues. Across the federal government there is a general trend toward a “graying” workforce and a looming retirement eligible bulge over the next few years. This didn’t happen overnight. It is the result of policies pursued in the past which result in the very condition described in the question preamble. As mentioned earlier, the Vice President often observes that decisions made today have less impact on present activity, but have profound affect on future leadership options. There is little to be gained by doing forensic work on past decisions that led to such imbalances. The present condition is an actuarial reality. So we are in hot pursuit of gathering the tools to help today and in the future.

The first item the President’s selected for his management agenda is the Strategic Management of Human Capital — a term coined by Dave Walker, the Comptroller General (head of GAO), to describe the imperative for the leadership to think more broadly about this challenge rather assuming the personnel department will worry about. The President became convinced that the senior leadership of every department and agency needed to focus on this condition if we are to see any improvement now and in the future. Now, some folks think there’s a hidden agenda to force further reductions in the federal workforce. If that were true, the best management approach to achieve that objective would be …. do nothing. The actuarial tables tell you that the accelerated retirement rates in the near future would achieve reductions in force without any effort. To the contrary, the Administration is actively pursuing recruitment, retention, a professional development tools to help affect the workforce balance today and in the future.

At NASA our first step was to develop the Human Capital strategic plan to assess our agency workforce skill needs, prescribe a path for achieving outcomes, and identifying the tools we need to get there. It’s been approved by all the relevant actors within the Administration. On the famous “management scorecard” we are “green” for the quality of the approved plan and — significantly — the FY04 President’s budget scorecard rates our condition as “yellow” on implementing our initiative which is an upgrade from the “red” score we got a year ago. Vicki Novak and our Human Resources folks have done an amazing job driving the plan to implementation and making measurable progress. Most importantly, our Center Directors have embraced the plan and are actively looking for opportunities to use the tools we have identified that are currently available to us to help shape the workforce balance needs — professional development opportunities, mobility options, retention incentives and a coordinated recruiting plan to tick off just a few.

And we haven’t stopped there. Last summer we forwarded a package of legislative initiatives to the Congress to enhance the use of Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) authorities, expand and increase retention bonus authorities, lifting the pay cap for critical need skills, establishing a Scholarship for Service program to attract future engineers and scientists, and pilot alternative compensation structures patterned after other federal agency “best practice” experiences. In developing the package we garnered unprecedented support from all the relevant players within the Administration, so NASA’s initiative was not as a solo actor. In the last few days we’ve reached agreement on the construct of the legislation and fully expect to see its inclusion in the upcoming omnibus bill wrap up the Congress is working now. We plan to get it all. But, what we don’t get, we’ll be back to Congress asking again as part of the new budget proposal.

In the weeks and months ahead, we should all be looking for evidence of vigorous use of existing retention tools and aggressive implementation of new tools soon to be enacted. This winter and spring will see evidence of agency-wide coordination of recruiting — and next fall a very concerted campaign to actively enlist future graduating classes of engineers, scientists and management professionals to our ranks. And on-going should be a renewed commitment to professional development to assure that we are always prepared to conquer the technical hurdles, proficiently manage through the program challenges, and pursue the exploration opportunities we’ve been charged with.

5. Cost credibility: There is an urban myth of sorts at NASA HQ that you showed up a few days after your nomination in 2001 and asked to sit in front of a computer and see NASA’s books so as to gauge the current status of NASA’s finances. So the story goes, you were not able to see such a system since it simply did not exist – and this left you less than pleased.

Over the past decade, even the most casual NASA watcher would be aware of the fact that NASA has a long standing credibility problem when it comes to costs. NASA’s answer: the IFMP – Integrated Financial Management Plan. In 2000, only weeks after NASA’s previous Administrator had assured Congress that the cost of the International Space Station was under control, a cost overrun of more than $4 billion suddenly appeared. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars and many years, all NASA’s IFMP had to show for itself was a balkanized accounting system which did not work any better than what it sought to replace. Moreover the IFMP never saw the ISS cost overrun coming.

Q: How has your revamping of NASA’s bookkeeping system sought to fix these long-standing problems? You have taken cost accountability on as your major task at NASA with a goal of one day having near- realtime availability of reliable budget information. When will your new accounting system be fully operational such that you can view data 24 hours old instead of a quarter old? A phrase you often use to describe NASA’s cost accountability predicament is “being in the penalty box” – how close is NASA to getting back out onto the ice again?

Sean O’Keefe: Much of what we do at NASA turns on our credibility to promise what we think we can do, and deliver on what we promise. We will always be hobbled by hits to our credibility if we don’t know what our efforts require in terms of resources — people talent, infrastructure, and financing. The Integrated Financial Management Program is our key to achieving visibility over these needs. This will help us assess those needs and articulate them with greater confidence in the accuracy and timeliness of the information.

Contrary to the premise of the question, IFMP is just now in the implementation phase. The core financial module is the first element of the program. It’s in place at Marshall and Glenn, soon to be following in the coming weeks at Johnson, Kennedy, and headquarters and completed at all our centers by the end of June — this summer, for the first time, a fully operational core financial system common throughout the agency. Thereafter, modules will be introduced to integrate personnel, inventory and other common support information visibility. Within this year we’ll all have access to timely, accurate and reliable cost information that will facilitate decision making, help inform trade offs, and give us the initial framework for developing performance metrics.

This is an ambitious management effort, but it really is the baseline for basic, modern management practices. Implementing this effort is the equivalent of the fundamental management (and football!) principle of “three yards and a cloud of dust.” Each step of the way has to be carefully tended and a lot of hard work by Pat Ciganer’s technical and management professionals is required to make sure its done right. Every Center Director has a well informed understanding of the progress and steps required to make it work — they’ve all learned more about IFMP systems than they ever thought they would (or wanted to, actually). This isn’t a cake walk, but it is also a very basic management imperative to restore our agency’s credibility. We can’t rely on a guess at what programs will require. The best we can get out of the present kluge of incompatible, stand alone, unique systems is data that is at least three months old — assuming the hand manipulated information is uniformly accurate. A tall assumption at best. OK — maybe we should celebrate the past contributions of these great legacy systems, sing songs of the exploits and heroism of the original designers, toast the remarkable longevity of these aged work horses — but let’s do that AND get on with implementing modern practices.

Results are already evident. Everyone across the agency will feel some effect from the IFMP implementation. We need to stay with it, keep each other informed on the progress, strap in for the inevitable bumps in the road, and work diligently to achieve the objective. The reward is a raised probability that we can deliver on what we said we’d do because our understanding of what it will take will be so much better informed. And this timely, accurate information access will inevitably change the way we do business every day. The more we understand what’s required, the better the debate will be setting goals, picking options and measuring outcomes.

Along the way folks are already noticing a marked change and improvement. Much hard work from Bill Gerstenmaier’s program management team has yielded recognition and approval from Tom Young’s task force examining the International Space Station. Among the many management improvements implemented is a cost estimating system which will tie in directly to the IFM effort to record program execution results. Today we can attest to the resource requirements and actuals with much greater confidence as a result of these efforts. It gave the President the confidence to send the FY 03 budget amendment last November on the Integrated Space Transportation Plan.

Similarly, we’ve just completed the annual audit of the agency financial statement and have earned an unqualified “clean” opinion. Coming off the heels of last year’s “disclaimed” opinion, this is an astonishing turn around. It’s a testimonial to the tireless work of Gwen Brown and her DCFO staff and Ken Winter who stepped in when we really needed him most. The recent audit points to some material weaknesses we can and will conquer next time to achieve the rarified standing of a model agency. And the IG will be keeping us honest to pursue that goal with deliberation. The President’s budget chapter on NASA clearly identifies the marked progress and, while we’re still “red” on the scorecard, we’re within striking range of an upgrade given these positive developments.

So, while we are still serving out the time, we’re up off the penalty box bench and getting ready to take the ice!

6. Education: In addition to cost and management reforms, one of the earliest themes to emerge in your tenure at NASA has been a renewed- and expanded focus on education. This manifested itself in a vigorous revival of the Educator Mission Specialist program and the appointment of senior education advisors at NASA HQ. It has also affected the new vision NASA has adopted for itself. Despite this recent emphasis, NASA has a decades-long relationship with teachers and students at all education levels. Given the recent flurry of activity, and NASA’s previous efforts, one has to assume that some existing things were being fixed while new ones were being launched.

Q: What existing educational programs will be expanded? What was not working in the way NASA operated its educational programs and how is this being rectified? What new activities can we expect to see launched in 2003 and beyond? How will this affect the way NASA conducts extramural research?

Sean O’Keefe: Education has been at the forefront of our charter since the agency’s founding in 1958. Tracing the early history of NASA there is a clear lineage of our current policies to forge relationships with university research activity and to leverage technology solutions through a variety of education partnerships. Our renewed focus on education is to build on these long standing relationships and coordinate our efforts thoroughly among the enterprises. That’s one element of what’s new in our approach. Until we established the Education Enterprise, the education activities were conducted by each of the respective enterprises to support the specific science, research and operational activities — coordination was an afterthought or happy coincidence at best. Associate Administrator for Education, Adena Loston and the impressive staff she has assembled will not change the content of activities, but look at opportunities to leverage the partnerships in a more agency inclusive manner.

From this set of established relationships, add the opportunity to introduce a “Scholarship for Service” program to recruit graduate students and undergrads working with Principal Investigators on a range of engineering and science research projects conducted on behalf of the agency. This is a largely untapped source of talent pool to help address our human capital challenges with folks conversant with the NASA mission and projects. As previously mentioned, this is a great way to implement the legislative authority we are seeking and expect to get soon. Moreover, its an opportunity to continually infuse diversity within our workforce by tapping the longstanding relationships developed with University Research Centers at HBCUs, Hispanic and Native American institutions while assuring that the research yield contributes to enterprise science and engineering objectives. The Education Enterprise will help assure that we haven’t just left these important objectives to chance and, instead, develop a concerted strategy to achieve these goals.

Another piece of the education initiative is to coordinate the wide range of education/student outreach programs conducted at each center. There are several “best practice” techniques to accomplish the mission of inspiring the next generation of explorers — student group events, rocket contests, space days, and a host of self-started efforts that touch the lives of countless school children. The Education Enterprise will be the forum for coordinating knowledge of these practices and encouraging their export across the full expanse of agency activities.

The emphasis on education begins at the highest level of the Administration. The President’s commitment to math and science education is a natural catalyst for all of us to consider how we can best advance these important objectives for our future — and motivate future explorers who will help find solutions to persistent problems and retain our global leadership. Countless commissions have pointed to the imperative to arrest the declining interest in math, science, engineering and technology related professions. NASA can help reverse that decline if we just target what we have in a very deliberate way.

There are also a wide range of informal relationships we have developed with institutions dedicated to education — museums, science centers, fifty Challenger Centers and countless foundations passionately focused on inspiring the wonders of exploration to our nation’s youth — and wowing all the rest of us grown ups for the bargain! The Education Enterprise is dedicated to actively working with all these institutions to assure that we make available to the public all the exciting work we have developed and the exciting discoveries we have made. At every center there are fascinating jewels that are sometimes firmly enclosed under a bushel barrel — not because we don’t want to let the public see them, but because we don’t always think of the external education venues that would thrive and prosper by access to the information/material. By and large, our centers are populated with folks who are focused on the project research at hand, as they should be. The Education Enterprise fills that important role of helping to point out those jewels and focus on how they can become inspiration tools in the hands of professional educators. And why not — the public has paid for it. We owe it to those we serve to get the maximum yield possible.

The engine to ignite the natural curiosity of our nation’s youth is the Educator Astronaut initiative. Nearly twenty years ago we rededicated ourselves to the importance of education when NASA introduced the Teacher in Space program. Christa McAuliffe was, is and always will be the first teacher in space. While this goal ended in tragedy for Mission Commander Dick Scobee’s heroic Challenger crew and their loved ones, the dream has endured. The sacrifice of those seven brave, amazingly impressive people will always be in our memory which helps define the very soul of our agency. So much of what we do today — our commitment to safety, our acceptance of accountability, and our renewed commitment to exploration — was defined by their sacrifice. And among those commitments is a deep abiding conviction that we can inspire the next generation of explorers.

The Educator Astronaut effort is quite simply to recruit those who can translate the excitement and wonder of space travel and exploration into our nation’s classrooms. Barbara Morgan’s flight with the crew of STS-118 in November will be the continuation of a dream to bring this experience to life to those who will pick up the mantle of exploration and carry it into the future. She and her colleagues who will follow as Educator Astronauts will connect with youth who have yet to make choices about professional opportunities — and motivate some to pursue engineering, science and technology careers they might never have considered. And if we do our jobs right today, we’ll have developed the enabling technologies to permit the generation they will help inspire tomorrow to go to the exotic destinations we merely dream of today. The stakes are that great and that important.

After only a week, the Educator Astronaut program has attracted a thousand nominations. Thousands of school children, teachers, and the just plain curious have logged on to NASA websites to learn more about what we do. If there was ever a testimonial to the depth of interest in NASA, this is certainly it! And that select few educators who will enter the Astronaut corps next year will join colleagues who come from the long lineage of test pilots like the early days of space exploration, but also more dominantly today the professional engineers, scientists, physicians, astronomers, marine biologists and Mike Massimino — who arguably gave up a great career prospect as a comedian — in the noble quest of exploration that has dominated human history. And besides — educators communicate far better than most of us.

We all need to contribute to this renewed mission focus. It isn’t just a new portfolio that the Education Enterprise will worry about so the rest of us can go about our business. It’s like safety — it ought to enter our minds with everything we do. For example, the enthusiasm for renewing our commitment to education was sparked by the persistence of Paul Pastorek, our General Counsel …. not the kind of portfolio one would naturally associate with education — go ahead, muster up the lawyer jokes! Without a doubt, Paul’s a seasoned lawyer who every day participates in the range of legal challenges that face our agency, but he also concentrates on wider agency responsibilities. He has a long history of dedicating time and attention to improving education — in addition to being an exemplary lawyer throughout his career. With that bias in mind when he came to NASA just a year ago, he pushed us to think about the great contributions we make to education, and helped build the path we are on today. He made a difference. We can all make a difference by thinking about what we can do to advance this important mission objective.

7. Faster-Better-Cheaper (FBC): FBC was the managerial mantra NASA proclaimed as its new way of doing business. To be certain, this approach did result in an increase in the number of missions NASA was able to mount – and the rate at which these missions flew. However, FBC was ill-defined and often led to a corners being cut resulting in very public and embarrassing failures. Even as FBC seemed to be having a positive effect in one part of the agency, massive cost overruns within the agency’s flagship program, the ISS, continued unabated in a manner most contradictory to FBC i.e. it was neither faster, better, or cheaper.

Q: Is FBC still the guiding philosophy at NASA or has it been replaced with something else? If so, what? With regard to mission development, do you believe in a ‘one approach-fits-all’ management style or a mixture of approaches keyed to the scale and complexity of a program on a case-by-case basis?

Sean O’Keefe: This management concept has general acceptance in many organizations dedicated to research and development. Technology forecasting is a very imprecise science –slightly better than alchemy — to predict the events of serendipity. By and large, benchmarking is hard to conduct because much of what we engage in at NASA either hasn’t been tried before or for which there is limited experience. As such, FBC is the equivalent of the “let a thousand flowers bloom” management philosophy to explore lots of different ways to meet objectives. That said, it is also very important to adopt a management approach that fits the precise point in the organization evolution. This is true for public organizations and private companies — one size doesn’t fit all. It’s imperative to pick the approach that advances the strategic objectives at that given point in time. As such, this not a commentary on the rectitude of the “faster-cheaper-better” management approach. Rather, this approach works when used at the right point in the technology or organization evolution. This may sound a bit like “pop management speak,” but it’s a management theory that’s been pretty well worked over.

At this phase of NASA’s evolution, we have elected to focus, choose and select the programs and pursuits to advance our three mission objectives — to understand and protect the home planet; explore the universe and search for life; and inspire the next generation of explorers …. as only NASA can. These strategic goals argue for a concentrated approach to conquer technical obstacles to exploration and development by employing technology to overcome speed, safety, human endurance, and environmental diagnostic challenges, among others. By channeling our finite human talent and resources, we can overcome these targeted obstacles. History and time will tell whether we have chosen the right strategic focus for this point in our agency’s evolution — but for the moment, it sure seems like the right course.

8. Space and Sean O’Keefe: as mentioned before, many in the space community were unsettled by the fact that you did not have an overt space pedigree. With the notable exception of James Webb, most who have led NASA have had a firm space background. While you have been forthright about your background – i.e. what you are and what you are not – that concern (justified or not) still remains.

Q: After a year at the helm, sources close to you suggest that the “space bug” has indeed bitten you. However, the true extent of your ‘infection’ still remains a mystery to most. How has your exposure to the space culture affected the way you now run the agency? Are there things you do differently today (as opposed to when you first arrived) as a result of these experiences? On a personal note: you grew up with the space age in the 1960s and 70s. What are your earliest memories of space exploration – and how would you characterize your interest in space as a child?

Sean O’Keefe: Responses to the previous questions should provide some glimpse as to the depth of my interest in what we do around this storied agency. No doubt, the morning line today and in whatever limited history is recorded will calibrate this period as a driven agenda to tackle recognized management challenges. Public service demands nothing less. And commitment to these ideals and objectives is nothing less than characteristic of service to this President and this Administration for the people we all serve. That’s the President’s mantra as it is for all of us privileged to serve for whatever period the public will permit. With unique application to NASA, I am part of the generation influenced by the seminal events we remember to the point of recalling where we were — the assassination of JFK, the lunar landing and the Challenger tragedy. Two of the three are directly linked to the NASA legacy and arguably JFK’s articulation of public service as a means to accomplish great goals establishes a generational link as well.

9. Self-rating: Although you have only been NASA’s Administrator for a year, you have had enough time to assess the agency’s strengths and weaknesses, and to begin to leave your mark.

Q: What is your greatest accomplishment thus far? How did you make it happen? What is your greatest frustration thus far? What are you going to do about it?

Sean O’Keefe: This is best left answered by bored historians and case writers, underpaid and under loved journalists, you and your noble readership.