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NSF Accused of Misuse of Funds In Giant Ecological Project
An anonymous reader writes: The National Science Foundation (NSF) and a contractor have been accused by both an audit and by Congress of a significant misuse of funds in a major ecological monitoring project costing almost a half a billion dollars. From the article: "With a construction budget of $433.7 million, NEON is planned to consist of 106 sites across the United States. Arrays of sensors at each site will monitor climate change and human impacts for 30 years, building an unprecedented continental-scale data set. Although some initially doubted its merits, the allure of big-data ecology eventually won over most scientists.
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
In a project worth half a billion, all the cited "unallowable" expenses are utterly and completely meaningless. Somebody has lost all perspective and all reason and is playing politics here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is just the usual Republican FUD trying to kill something that might give us some actual numbers about climate change.
Among the bombshells:
- $11,000 for coffee for a $433 Million project... OMG!
- $3,000 for t-shirts... oh, the corruption! what is the world coming to???
Really... is this the best they can come up with???
After the hearing, DCAA director Bales said she was not impressed by the scale of the alleged misconduct. “In the contract world, we do a lot of reports that disallow this kind of thing. So, you know, people do it,” she said. “But then we identify it.”
Also significant was that the project managers were not invited to the hearing, thus insuring that this would be a true kangaroo court.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I wonder how this stacks up against waste in huge projects at Boeing or blackwater? The waste is bad but no surprise and seems to be a very small percentage. I wonder how much pressure to generate bad press has been applied by vested interests who do not want data like that made available?
Silence is a state of mime.
These are normal things a company would spend it's own money on. They shouldn't be charging it back to the government.
That said, I have to question why the /. editors think this is newsworthy. I suppose they want to keep stirring the Republican anti-science pot to generate page hits.
Every University, business and organization that receives grants has overhead rates. These vary from reasonable to ridiculous based on the organization.
These overhead funds then typically go into a larger, not grant specific, fund that is fungible. The spending out of that fund is then restricted not by grant guidelines, but by the general rules of the institution. Usually that is still somewhat restricted at a University, for example, that usually won't allow alcohol. However, businesses receiving grants generally have fewer restrictions.
If you want to look at how overhead is used out of those general funds, I'm certain you will find this at any recipient organization. I am in fact surprised this is all they found. The fact that they are only looking at NSF and focusing on politically controversial topics for their specific party is very suspect. Should we start looking at how defense contractors spend all of their overhead for DARPA awards? Would they even share that information like NEON did?
100% correct.
About being silly.
The difference between weather and climate is temporal, not spatial.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Making sure that all the billing goes through correctly is not trivial.
No. But it has been done (successfully) by numerous entities in the past. Everything from suppliers who handle gov't, DoD and commercial contracts simultaneously to law offices who have to allocate billable hours to the proper clients, there are well established processes out there. And off the shelf accounting s/w.
Have gnu, will travel.
So, a Texas Republican who is a climate change and evolution skeptic that's been put in charge of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has a problem with an ecological project by the NSF. I'm shocked.
You might want to look at this Science article for a little clarification.
http://news.sciencemag.org/pol...
Meanwhile, the defense budget...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sensors can monitor only weather. They can monitor neither climate nor change. Both must be calculated from series of data points.
That's sort of like saying you can't measure the area of a room using a tape measure,. After all, you have to perform a calculation based on the measurements you collect; the tape measure doesn't have an "area" reading. By one sufficiently pedantic, narrow, arrogant, obnoxious measure, you could argue that you were correct--and you probably would get punched by a lot of tradespeople who recognized you were just being an insufferable prick instead of making a useful contribution.
The sensors - or the tape measure - are necessary tools for the process, even though they don't directly output the final processed result.
~Idarubicin
Who are you talking to? Do you have some internal argument going on in your head?
We're talking about a guy, a congressman with actual power, who chairs the House Science & Technology Committee, who believes the earth is 6000 years old, that someone named "Adam & Eve" were the first humans (one of which was fashioned out of the other's spare rib). And who then flips out over an ecology project that costs less than 1/2 that of a single failed fighter/bomber (one that's built in his district by the way). Oh, and that fighter/bomber? It'll never be used and the military says they don't want or need it. He does this of course, after taking shitloads of money from the defense industry.
Now THAT'S integrity.
He's crying about waste in government, while he works exactly 70 four-hour days, drawing a taxpayer-funded salary of $174,000, not to mention a full pension for life, all his expenses paid (a household in DC for those 70 days) and one at home, health care for life and even free postage he can use to write letters asking his constituents for more money.
It's hard to take rightwing, science-hating Bible-humpers seriously when y'all defend such an obvious fraud, not to mention an obvious shitlord who believes governing is basically the publicly-funded version of gamergate. Oh, by the way this fraud supported no less than nine separate House inquiries into Benghazi, even after the first eight found no wrongdoing. Each one of those investigations had a multi-million dollar pricetag.
So you can just walk that climate change denying ass right out of here with that bullshit, parson. Your ass is showing.
You are welcome on my lawn.