NASA Contract Management
Abstract
In January 1990, in the aftermath of scandals at the Departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development, the General Accounting Office began a special effort to review and report on federal government program areas that we considered high risk. After consulting with congressional leaders, GAO sought, first, to identify areas that are especially vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. We then began work to see whether we could find the fundamental causes of problems in these high-risk areas and recommend solutions to the Congress and executive branch administrators. We identified 17 federal program areas as the focus of our project. These program areas were selected because they had weaknesses in internal controls (procedures necessary to guard against fraud and abuse) or in financial management systems (which are essential to promoting good management, preventing waste, and ensuring accountability). Correcting these problems is essential to safeguarding scarce resources and ensuring their efficient and effective use on behalf of the American taxpayer. This report is one of the high-risk series reports, which summarize our findings and recommendations. It describes our concerns over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) lack of adequate controls over a variety of contract management and related activities. NASA has implemented or begun to implement most of the recommendations we have made for improving these activities. NASA has also implemented other contract management improvement initiatives.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA263092
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office