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."

Comments

Put it in perspective

[GuyMannDude]

Yeah, it pisses me off that greedy and selfish people are ripping NASA off, but consider this all important paragraph from the story:

NASA says such problems are taken seriously but that the dollar amounts of fraud represent a small part of the agency's overall budget, which in 2002 was $14.8 billion. A total of the fraudulent amounts was not available.

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

Re:Put it in perspective

[CaptainCarrot]

I don't see where Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has the right to make statements like...

He has the right to say it because of the First Amendment, just like the rest of us do. That doesn't mean he's right, or that it's not a stupid thing to say.

A person like this can make a great amount of political hay by making grand, sweeping statements about eliminating waste in government. But he has to pick his targets carefully, because he could alienate a segment of his constituency if any of them happen to benefit from a particular example of waste. NASA, however, is a safe target which is why Congress can get away with giving it such a miniscule budget to begin with.

Happens all the time

[Smidge204]

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=

The worst abuses of their budgets

[infonography]

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.

Re:The worst abuses of their budgets

[Dr. Manhattan]

A friend of mine used to work for NASA, helping run their IT stuff. They had no budget for buying computers - zero, zip, nada. So they were forced to buy "printer test equipment". I wonder how much of the 'fraud' comes from creative budget reallocations like that?

5 minute breaks?

[phorm]

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).