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NASA Contractor Fraud
Punk Walrus writes "AP New is reporting that NASA has been defrauded dozens of times with things like faulty parts for the International Space Station or even the theft of moon rocks. Just in the last year, NASA contractors and even some of its own employees (more than 50 individuals and nearly three dozen instances) have cost NASA a small chunk out of their $14.8 billion budget. In one case, a NASA contract worker pleaded guilty to accepting $27,000 worth of collect telephone calls from prison inmates, and her company billed the cost to the Hubble Space Telescope program. Remember when Opus on Bloom County wanted to build a satellite Shield of dollar bills around the earth's orbit? Now it doesn't seem so funny anymore."
Another contractor stole even more - two toilet seats and one space pen, estimated to $270,000
Yeah, it pisses me off that greedy and selfish people are ripping NASA off, but consider this all important paragraph from the story:
Until we get some numbers here, I don't see where Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has the right to make statements like ``It is clear that there are some fundamental errors in the NASA system. I would hope that NASA Administrator (Sean) O'Keefe pays attention to these fundamental systemic problems.'' NASA has a lot to deal with already. Every government agency has to deal with waste and fraud. The big question is whether it is any worse at NASA than any other agency and this article does not even begin to answer that question.
GMD
watch this
From personal experience in the construction business, I can assure you one thing: 90% of the contractors you get are scum. What do you expect? You choose the guy who will do the job for the least amount of money... which means he's going to make up for it by giving you crap workmanship and materials.
:)
In the private sector, the engineers and project managers oversee every nut, bolt, wire tie and conduit connector that goes into a building. (Or at least they're supposed to). If the contractor bids the job saying he plans on using device X model FOO as manufactured by QUIX Co., then submits cut sheets for some other piece of equipment (or worse, the engineers visit the site and find something else already installed), you can bet they get a hard time about it.
If the engineers and the owners decide that the differnt product is acceptable, then the contractor has to pay the owner back whatever the difference in price is. If the product is no approved, then it gets rejected and the contractor has no choice but to install the equipment originally specified. The contractor doesn't get paid until the owner is satisfied that the job was done correctly and as approved by the designers. (And even then it's a struggle sometimes)
I can't say how NASA operates, but with government funding I wouldn't be surprized that few people really, really check the purchase orders and equipment that closely.
After all, the government doesn't get pissed when you run out of money, they just don't give you any more... a private owner would have his attack lawyers waiting outside your office the next morning!
Nobody should find it surprizing that people are exploiting a system that isn't looked after properly. I wonder if NASA does punchlists on their space shuttle repairs! (I can see it now... "O-ring seal on left booster rocket not installed correctly..."
=Smidge=
Congress is the worst abuser of NASA's budget. I don't see that changing as long as there is power to be had at the expense of the advancement of mankind.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Who would have guessed that there would be fraud on government contracts?!!??!
;) so this stuff is going to happen. From what I have read in the article it isn't as bad as some government fraud problems (can we say S&L or the B2 or the Osprey? Or the X-33?).
Serisouly, I am not really surprised, this stuff happens all the time. Heck I worked for a multi-billion dollar company and we had some guy who made 11,000 dollars worth of 900 number calls, so as weird as the lady getting collect calls from prison is I am not surprised. The average person is a greedy idiot, government contracts are full of regular people (heck who do you think works for NASA, rocket scientists?
All I know is that NASA is working to fix this. If only the whole government could do the same.
Do you smoke? If so, do you take smoking breaks? Are those deducted from your work time? Or are you getting paid to smoke?
If you don't punch a clock and are five minutes late do you make up that five minutes or do you defraud your company?
It happens-- stop picking on NASA. They have employee problems just like Joe Schmoe Co. down the street.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
Thank you for saying 90%... I think.
I am a government contractor, and not one of those megabloat corporations.
As a small business, our only calling card is our past performance. F**k up just once, and that can be the end of the company. Defraud the government, and that's your ticket to Federal Pound-me-in-the-Ass Prison for a looong time.
Contractors get a (well-deserved in many cases) bad reputation, and they don't get future work with the government (or at least that portion of it).
And yes, this was done on company time. As a salaried employee, I work 40-70 hours a week. We have a deal. I don't bitch when we have to work long hours, and he doesn't bitch when I screw around.
The biggest fraud on NASA is the people who suggested that useful science for an international space station could be found in order to justify expensive contracts.
The second is contractors claiming in the 70's that a space shuttle would be cheaper than one-off rocket launches.
It is one thing to deliver the wrong part for the right ship, but it is another to bamboozle somebody to build the wrong ship to begin with. Plus it is hard to prosecute such.
Table-ized A.I.
Depending on work hours, employees in Canada are entitled to certain breaks. Unless its very consistent, being 5 minutes late isn't a big thing. I've been late a few times, but not as often as I've worked a little extra time unpaid. The same applies to breaks.
It's hard to feel bad about taking an extra 5 minutes breather when you spent to previous 3 days working through lunch, and most employers would probably agree. It's those whose attendance or performance is consistently poor that cause problems. Taking a 5 minute break (smoking or otherwise), is not nearly comparable to taking collect calls on the company budget (and from the size of the bill, probably spending a lot of company time on the phone).
That a company so high in technology and intended to deal with the new frontiers of space and science cannot even deal with blatant fraud and rampant idiocy?
What have they got, a few hundred scientists at $100/hr each and a then backroom accountant and token lawyers that can't even save the company several thousand buckazoids (anyone get this reference) in fraud?
Well, while it is true that many large corporations/organizations suffer the same problems, a large degree of this is directly related to the fact that NASA encourages COST-plus accounting, and do not penalize their contractors for going over budget. That, and the fact that each of the NASA centers utilizes different accounting methods and software. Until they standardize on how they manage their contracts and accounts, NASA will continue to be a huge budgetary sink.
www.nasawatch.com is a great place if you want to found NASA for silly behavior. My favorite notes of recent past are the millions that go to prokbellying supportive districts with no direct link to science or aerospace concerns.
Hell, NASA in the past ten years couldn't even figure out HOW MUCH they were overspending! I think if a problem has been around for more than ten years, you might have had the time to deal with it in a professional manner.
and don't get me started on their whole 'preferred contractor' anti-competitive behavior...
Huge government contracts are hard to administer and even more difficult to eliminate from abuse. You only have a few contract monitors. The NASA system is set up to where you have one contracting officer that has cognizance of multiple contracts (millions upon millions of dollars). The contracting officer has to rely on COTRs (contracting officer's technical representative) to monitor and administer the day-to-day execution of the contract. These people are engineers that move into project management positions. COTR training last less than a week. I know, I was a COTR for a few years for NASA. You really have a tough time just keeping track of the technical details of the project. Budgetary issues are easiest handled with large block line items without any kind of detailed itemization of expenses.
NASA is not the only government agency that has been the victim of contractor fraud and abuse. It is now and has been in the past much more prevalent in the DoD.
As far as employee abuse, any large organization is going to have that problem. There is a lot of freedom in the NASA environment and culture so abuse will naturally happen. I remember shortly after coming on board another engineer referring to "G-jobs". I came to find out that these were things like using NASA machine shops and laboratories for personal projects like building a home satellite dish and stuff. The more cool toys you have available at work the grander the abuse will sound. The article really makes it sound awful, but it really isn't anything new and the benefits gained from the money spent on NASA far outweigh any losses due to abuse.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Steal $100, you're a thief and a bum.
Steal $100M, you're a captain of industry
and a corporate hero.
I am really *really* curious as to the nature of these calls from inmates. On the job phone sex? Looking for a wife-beater? Boredom?
When NASA stops spending my money, I will stop "picking on NASA".
Until they do though they should be held to a higher standard then the private sector.
"On Feb. 1, 2002, a juvenile computer hacker known as ``Pimpshiz'' was sentenced in Contra Costa County, Calif. after pleading guilty to replacing a NASA web page at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md... His sentence included...a prohibition that he may not use the ``Pimpshiz'' nickname during his two-years probation."
/. login?
Woo hoo! The Pimpshiz name is finally available again. Now how do I change my