Reviews by GAO, the NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and NASA itself have identified various problems, including a lack of strong leadership, authority, and oversight; fragmented and overlapping responsibilities; redundant operations; unintegrated planning and budgeting processes; poorly managed systems development efforts; nonstandard and obsolescent systems; and multiple communications networks. NASA Limited the Power and Authority of Its CIO

While recognizing the need for a CIO to address long-standing IRM problems and to promote streamlining of IRM functions, NASA has been reluctant to limit the authority of its field centers and program offices to make independent decisions about how best to use information technology to carry out their space and aeronautics missions. CIO Initiatives to Date Represent First Steps Toward More Effective IRM

Despite the limitations imposed on his authority, the NASA CIO has taken some important first steps to improve IRM at NASA. Initiatives in this area include instituting software and hardware standards and developing a technical architecture to achieve interoperability among administrative systems at the desktop and file server levels. Opportunities to Strengthen the CIO Position and IRM Program

Standardization and consolidation efforts undertaken so far have been to some degree successful. Thus, Goddard would be allowed to continue to independently maintain its mission-related systems. These opportunities could result in significant savings, especially given the fact that NASA spends as much as 91 percent of its IT budget on mission-related activities. Funding for administrative and institutional IT is spread among these individual budgets and cannot be accurately consolidated, given the nonstandard funding categories that the various program offices use. Instituting an effective IT resource tracking system will be an essential step toward ensuring the effectiveness of IT investments and meeting the requirements of ITMRA and related legislation. GAO Comments

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Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) efforts to implement a chief information officer (CIO) position, focusing on: (1) CIO initiatives to improve information resources management (IRM); and (2) opportunities for NASA to strengthen the CIO position and improve its IRM program.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) NASA CIO has taken some action to address longstanding IRM problems including the lack of strong leadership, authority, and oversight, fragmented and overlapping responsibilities, redundant operations, unintegrated planning and budgeting processes, multiple communications networks, and poorly managed systems development efforts; (2) although NASA recognizes the need to address these IRM problems, it has been reluctant to limit the authority of its field centers and program offices to make independent decisions on how best to use information technology (IT) to carry out their missions; (3) despite these limitations, NASA CIO is instituting software and hardware standards to achieve interoperability among administrative systems, integrating IRM planning and budgeting processes, and revising IRM policies to reflect organizational changes; (4) strengthening the CIO position would enable NASA to achieve efficiencies and savings among mission-related systems; (5) agencywide investments in mission-related systems and related contractor services constitute as much as 91 percent of the annual NASA IRM budget; (6) funding for IT investments cannot be accurately consolidated given the nonstandard funding categories that various program offices use; and (7) instituting an effective IT resource tracking system is essential to ensuring the effectiveness of IT investments.