NASA's External Institute Funding Is Totally Uncoordinated
NASA OIG: Review of NASA-Funded Institutes
“We found NASA does not aggregate information on the universe, status, or funding levels for the many institutes it supports. The absence of this information makes it difficult for Agency leaders to strategically evaluate the scope or purpose of its institute investments or for Congress and other stakeholders to understand how NASA is spending more than three-quarters of a billion dollars of its budget annually. Moreover, the Agency has not defined what constitutes an institute or established guidance and metrics on their management, use, or expectations for return on investment. Such guidance may enable the Agency to gain a better understanding of how funds directed to institutes are utilized to accomplish its mission and goals, increase its return on investment, and evaluate institutes’ performance.
During the course of this review, we became aware of two institutes GeneSys Research Institute (GRI) and the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) under investigation by the Federal Government for alleged grant fraud. GRI declared bankruptcy and the status of its work under two NASA grants of approximately $500,000 is unknown. Likewise, the status of IGES work under approximately $500,000 of NASA funding is also unknown. In past work we found NASA lacked a standard process to assess a potential grantee’s financial condition prior to grant award or to impose additional reporting or oversight requirements that such a condition may warrant. Without such a mechanism, NASA risks making uninformed investment decisions.”
Hello. I suspect that you are on to something…really….
Also, if these realities exist at such a ‘public’ organization..I wonder what is really going on at less ‘noticeable’ places.
The first of these GeneSys Research Institute was in bankruptcy because, according to a news story, millions of dollars in grants from NIH, National Cancer Institute, DOE, and NASA was allegedly “missing”. No followup after the initial story except for all kinds of bankruptcy legal filings.
The second, IGES, has some interesting financial filings. The director, a professor at George Mason U, paid himself a salary in 2014 of over $300k for a 28 hour work-week. That exceeds his GMU salary. Couldn’t find any grant fraud info. Their NASA work isn’t on their website that I could find – it’s a science education portal and independent peer review of NASA grant proposals.
It’s important to note that there are two different organizations called IGES in this report, and they have two different entries. In one table they are differentiated as IGES and IGES-2, but not throughout the report.
The one that is under investigation is the Institute of Global Environment and Society. That’s entirely different and independent from the one you mention in your last sentence, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies.
All, as the President of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), I would like to clarify that we are not the same organization discussed in the section on “Instances of Financial Instability” in the subject report. Unfortunately, we share the same acronym, but that is all. Our organization does do education product peer review as found and discussed on the website mentioned below. However, we are not the IGES organization once affiliated with GMU. I ask that you please be careful in conflating our two organizations. Sincerely, Nancy Colleton
What’s astonishing to me is the number of institutes which did not have scandals but for which funding has been gradually or sharply cut over the three years shown in the report (2013-5). There are few things more damaging to a research program than unreliable funding. Doesn’t the IG think that is important? What’s going on?