Keith’s note: the second contractor insourcing wave at NASA has started at JSC. MCC staff contractors were recently insourced. Now many more JSC contractors are going to be converted in flight ops, exploration, and engineering. Job postings in July will be open to all applicants. No telework will be allowed.

Keith’s note: a modified version of the long-feared ‘Schedule F’ has arrived albeit in a somewhat truncated form. Thousands of career civil service positions are now political positions subject to new rules including greatly enhanced ease of quick dismissal. Curiously there has been no public mention of this dramatic personnel overhaul by NASA. (earlier posts).

• Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service, White House: “Section 1. Purpose. The President relies on subordinates in the executive branch to help him faithfully execute the laws and advance the priorities for which he was elected by the American people. Officials in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, and policy-advocating roles (policy-influencing positions) play particularly important roles in helping him fulfill this constitutional duty. Therefore, ensuring that such employees can be removed for misconduct or poor performance is essential to protecting democratic self-government by an elected President.”
• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Increases Accountability in the Federal Workforce, White House: “Federal employee removal procedures are lengthy and burdensome. Removals and subsequent appeals often take a year or more to process. As a result, agencies seldom remove career employees, even at senior levels, including for egregious conduct or subversion of Presidential priorities.”
• Trump signs order moving thousands of federal employees into Schedule F, Government Executive: “The official said the vast majority — around 97% — of those impacted are either GS-15s or senior leaders (SL). Jobs targeted for conversion include agency office and division heads; C-suite posts like chief information officers; regional officers and their deputies and chiefs of staff; program managers; those who help write federal regulations and attorneys involved in crafting agency or internal policies, as well as advisors, senior HR officials and grantmaking posts.”
• Trump moves about 8,000 federal positions to Schedule Policy/Career, Federal News Network: “You can have any political views, but if you allow those views to basically interfere with your willingness to actually carry out lawful orders and policy directives with the administration, then this provides a mechanism for people in those agencies to be able to be removed effectively at-will,” [Office of Personnel Management Director Scott] Kupor continued.”

Keith’s note: the following email was sent by NASA Goddard Center director regarding insourcing at Katherine Johnson IV&V Facility in West Virginia. Full text below

Keith’s note: Last week the ATOM contract at NASA Ames which provides O&M support for the Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (Code AO) and the Arc Jets (Code TSF) was informed that NASA will be insourcing this contract and converting the majority of the contract to GS positions ~ 100 people.

Keith’s note: I posted an item Contractor Conversion Flaws Arise At NASA wherein I summarized information from multiple employees at NASA KSC about workforce contractor to civil servant conversion. Before I continue, I stand by what I wrote based on the very real sources I interacted with. But this is NASA we’re talking about i.e. “NASA = Never A Simple (Straight) Answer“. Communication up and down the management tree at NASA is always flawed with chronic built-in distortion. The new Administrator’s push for transparency has helped, but his efforts are a work in progress. NASA PAO usually ignores NASAWatch these days, so the agency’s response came via the @NASAAdmin account saying that what I posted was “not true”. Again, I can only go by what sources convey to me and what I can confirm via those sources. This evening I got a note from someone in the mix at KSC that contradicts much (but not all) of what I posted (see below). I know who the person is – but retribution for speaking out is still alive and well at NASA – so they will simply be known as “LETF Employee”. Full response from LETF Employee below.

Keith’s update: see “Contractor Conversion: Two Things Can Be True At NASA” Keith’s note: I have been hearing of some concern at NASA KSC (and elsewhere around NASA too) about a perceived rush to convert core functions from contractors to civil servants. At a top level there is a certain logic to this. But when reality pops up it gets messy. One issue has to do with waiving education requirements to retain civil servant expertise. Again, this makes some sense – people who have been doing the job and doing it well should be allowed to continue regardless of where they got their experience. But when this is put in practice it is totally different. Some of the engineering folks at KSC have 10, 20, 30+ years of experience but are lacking college degrees. They are being told that this prevent or limits their ability to be converted from contractor to civil servant. At the Launch Equipment Test Facility (LETF) the younger contractor engineers with degrees were converted – but the ‘legacy’ (older) engineers were laid off – and with them a lot of space muscle memory went out the door. Update: this response from the NASA Administrator’s witter account was just tweeted. NASA PAO does not bother to contact me directly any more. I stand by my post. Apparently the full picture is not being communicated clearly at all levels and among affected employees at NASA KSC.

Keith’s note: according to the NASA KSC posting “NASA announced Friday Janet Petro, center director for the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is retiring. … Effective Friday, Kelvin Manning now is stepping into the role of acting center director”. Jared Isaacman also put out a note (see below).

Keith’s note: According to the NASA Force page: “NASA Force is a new hiring initiative—developed in partnership with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management … Highly skilled early- to mid- career engineers, technologists, and innovators join NASA for focused term appointments, typically 1–2 years with the possibility of extension … The first opportunity opens on April 17 and closes April 21.” More

Keith’s note: Dr. Kate Marvel at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (gutted by NASA and DOGE) has left the agency. According to E&E News “Kate Marvel announced Tuesday that she’d quit her job at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies due to ongoing uncertainties about science funding and the ability to conduct climate research under the Trump administration.” On BlueSky she noted: “I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.”

Keith’s Note: According to GovExec: “While NASA has yet to formally terminate its contract with IFPTE, it has begun unilaterally changing employees’ personnel files to label their positions as ineligible for collective bargaining. NASA announced it would take these steps last September but seemingly did not begin implementing them until last month. The moves come just weeks after OPM updated its guidance governing implementation of the two union executive orders”. More.