I've found the problem .......
Posted on 05/14/2004 12:24:16 PM PDT by Paul Ross
Updated: 2:16 p.m. ET May 14, 2004NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - As NASA sets course for the moon and Mars, the space agency's finances are in disarray, with significant errors in its last financial statements and inadequate documentation for $565 billion posted to its accounts, its former auditor reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
You know, I can't say that I'm surprised....
What, again? This is the kind of thing that got NASA voted one of the four worst-managed gov't programs. That was the Senate that presented the award.
The Mars Rover ate our records...
NASA's chief for internal financial management said the problem stemmed from a rough transition from 10 different internal accounting programs to a new integrated one, but audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers noted basic accounting errors and a breakdown in NASA's financial controls.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and NASA parted ways earlier this year, according to the space agency's inspector general, Robert Cobb. PriceWaterhouseCoopers declined to comment, but a source familiar with the situation said the audit firm opted out of the contract because it was unhappy with the relationship.
In a scathing report on NASA's Sept. 30, 2003, financial statement, the audit firm accused the space agency of one of the cardinal sins of the accounting world: failing to record its own costs properly.
The same report said the transition to the new accounting program triggered a series of blunders that made completing the NASA audit impossible.
There were hundreds of millions of dollars of "unreconciled" funds and a $2 billion difference between what NASA said it had and what was actually in its accounts, which are held by the Treasury Department (news - web sites), PriceWaterhouseCoopers said in its report.
$565 BILLION
"The documentation NASA provided in support of its September 30, 2003, financial statements was not adequate to support $565 billion in adjustments to various financial statement accounts," the auditor wrote in a Jan. 20 report to Cobb, NASA's inspector general. It also noted "significant errors" in financial statements provided by NASA.
That big number -- $565 billion, with a "B" -- was the result of posting problems, new software and a "massive cleanup" of 12 years of NASA's financial records, said Patrick Ciganer, NASA's chief for integrated financial management.
Under the new system, Ciganer said in a telephone interview, errors that were discovered in the transition could show up multiple times in the accounting process: once as an erroneous credit in one column, then as a debit to delete the error, then as a credit in the correct column. By this reckoning, a $40 billion contract that stretched over nine years and several separate NASA centers generated $120 billion worth of entries, and these were turned over to the auditors.
"They have weak controls and problems with their internal system and that would make them vulnerable to (financial) fraud, although we don't have that evidence yet," said Gregory Kutz, a director in the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), which is looking into NASA's accounting issues. A Senate hearing on the issue was set for Wednesday.
PRIORITIES
With a current annual budget of $16.2 billion, NASA's priorities include an ambitious multi-year mission to the moon and possibly Mars, finishing construction on the International Space Station (news - web sites) and returning the grounded shuttle fleet to flight after the 2003 Columbia disaster.
The independent investigation of the Columbia accident, in which seven astronauts died, found NASA's culture at fault. The same spirit that fueled the early boom in space exploration in the 1950s evolved into separate parts of a sprawling agency working independently rather than cooperatively.
The same independent path extends to NASA's financial accounting, Cobb said.
"You've got an environment at the agency where there are these 10 centers which pride themselves on their independence ... and it becomes very difficult in connection with any of NASA's functional management responsibilities to have people kowtow to the folks at (NASA) headquarters who have the responsibility to pull it all together," Cobb said.
Cinager said he was hopeful that NASA's culture would change, noting a new "willingness of all of the constituencies in the agency to introspectively look at how can they improve the way they are doing their specific duties."
But Shyam Sundar, a professor in accounting with Yale School of Management, described the event as "a big mess," after seeing the auditor's report.
"If NASA would have been a public company, the management would have been fired by now," he said.
I laughed...until I remembered who's pockets they were drawing from....
The 565 billion appears to be posting errors corrected with other posting errors. Sounds like we need to fire the whole bunch and hire Burt Rutan to run the whole thing.
Somebody should tell NASA about QuickBooks.
Actually, more than a leeeeetle curousthat tis story comes out Friday afternoon, a few days after the World Bank scandal "breaks"
Basic accounting isn't exactly rocket science.
But one beyond the bureaucrats apparently... No bucks, no Buck Rogers. The truly scary part is that there was a $2 billion gap between the money NASA thought it had, and what was really in the accounts. Which direction do you suppose the error lay, up (to the good) or down (to the bad)? I assume, as with most people who can't balance their checking accounts, that it was negative.... Hence, a whole bunch of NASA checks likely are set to bounce...
How long before the media presswhores blame Bush for this too?? Sheesh!
This statement could be applied to many, many government agencies - federal and state. We know it, yet tolerate it as a cost of doing business. How many times have we been forced to listen to the defense, "It's expensive to run a democracy."
Is that billion supposed to be million? I find it hard to believe even a government agency whose annual budget is 20 billion could misplace the equivelant of over 20 years of annual budget allocations
Does any Govt Dept actually balance their books?
My wife works for NASA in the budgeting process and from what I hear from her the part of the problem is that NASA (scientists/managers) for so long only seems to care about the science and missions and do not want to focus on budget stuff. Most of their budget analysts at Goddard Space Flight Center are greatly overworked, understaffed and very frustrated. (The beatings will continue until moral improves)
So when a problem like this comes up it's no surprise at all.
Clearly the problem was not solved under Dan Golden (NASA Administrator under Bush 41 and Clinton) who lead NASA for 10 years (I think that time frame is right).
Now whether the bigger problem was with NASA (Golden) for not raising the problem, the President (Clinton) for ignoring and not wanting to make a new budget system a priority (Probably the right answer) or Congress for not funding the solution is for other to decide.
Clinton clearly cut NASA funding during his terms.
Bush and O'Keefe were clearly left with Clinton's and Golden's mess. I don't think anyone can argue that. Golden had started the PriceWaterhouse effort but it has now turned into a big mess as well with PriceWaterhouse bailing.
Billion.
Bush put O'Keefe in as Director to clean this up. It's apparently still not cleaned up.
Congress:.."Where's the money Nasa"?
Nasa:..."We think most of it burried in the ledger under Glue"
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