Prospector

NASA, time to pull the feeding tube?

A presentation and white paper from NASA were released last Monday and I have been stewing over them since. I really would like to see NASA succeed in advancing science and exploration but I am mostly discouraged by the useless cover-your-ass nonsense that bubbles from America’s greatest group-think tank. A good subtitle for the “NASA Transformation Whitepaper” would be, “How to prevent organizational change.”

There are numerous examples throughout the plan of efforts to prop up the bureaucracy and keep the organizational budget large. I mention a few brief examples here.

The transformational plan is based on supporting core values of safety, the NASA family, excellence and integrity. These are very good American values. Who could complain about such a noble foundation? These core values in fact would be excellent for, maybe, the Post Office.

For an agency that is supposed to be breaking out into uncharted space and exploring the unknown, one would think that they would have something in their values like Exploration, Innovation, Inspiration, or Leadership.

In a table of “Transformational Efforts” in a “Managing Change” section of the report the first two efforts are “Return to Flight” and “ISS Continuing Flight”. I am sure that the astronauts aboard ISS are appreciative of the transformation of NASA to support them. Without transformation was NASA going to rollover and give up?

One final absurdity. Does this look like fertile ground for innovation? I copy this bullet-point slide directly from the presentation:

We are managing change in an integrated, systematic way
–Establishing new organizational constructs, policies and procedures that reinforce desired ways of operating
–Changes are being formally documented
–Change progress is being tracked and measured
–A formalized communications and feedback process has been established and is being actively utilized throughout the change process


OneNASA - NASA Transformation March 2005 - Internal Presentation
NASA Transformation White Paper | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

posted by Prospector @ 10:40 AM