NASA鈥檚 financial watchdog is a toothless organisation that does not understand the role of an auditor. That is the scathing conclusion of a report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
NASA鈥檚 Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is charged with improving the space agency鈥檚 efficiency while also identifying any mismanagement or abuse of its $17 billion annual budget. Yet out of the 71 NASA programme audits carried out between 2006 and 2007, only one identified any potential cost savings, claims the GAO report. This makes NASA鈥檚 inspectorate poor value for money, say the authors, who calculate that the OIG recoups only 36 cents for every dollar it costs to run, compared with an average of $9.49 for those overseeing other US agencies.
Most of the blame is directed at Robert Cobb, head of the OIG, for choosing investigations not intended to save money. He counters that the GAO report is flawed because it uses 鈥渟elective and incomplete data鈥�. Politicians may have had enough, however. Bart Gordon, chairman of the US House Committee on Science and Technology, wants Barack Obama鈥檚 administration to remove Cobb from his post.
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