United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to the Chairman, Committee on

Science, House of Representatives

October 1995 EARTH SCIENCE

INFORMATION

NETWORK

Relationship of

Consortium to Federal

Agencies

GAO/NSIAD-96-13

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-259468 

October 27, 1995

The Honorable Robert S. Walker

Chairman, Committee on Science

House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

As you requested, we reviewed the activities of the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and identified

(1) the nature of CIESIN’s mission, (2) CIESIN’s past and prospective funding,

(3) the way the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will

oversee CIESIN’s work on the human dimensions of global change (HDGC),1

(4) the similarity of activities between CIESIN and the National Science

Foundation’s Centers for HDGC, and (5) CIESIN’s building requirements.

Background CIESIN (pronounced “season”) was established in 1989 as a private,

nonprofit organization chartered by the state of Michigan. It is structured

as a consortium of university and nongovernmental research

organizations. The current members of the consortium are

• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan;

• Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan;

• Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, Michigan;

• University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland;

• Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York; and

• Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Results in Brief CIESIN’s mission is to provide access to, and to enhance the use of,

information related to human interactions in the environment by scientists

and policy decisionmakers. In support of this mission, CIESIN provides the

means that enable access to HDGC databases worldwide.

CIESIN has received almost all of its funding—a total of over $82 million

made available through June 1995—from the federal government,

primarily under congressional appropriations specifically designated, or

earmarked, for CIESIN. Most of this funding came from four federal

agencies—NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of

1

Human activities, such as industrialization and urbanization, have contributed to such environmental

impacts as ozone depletion and greenhouse gases.

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Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Departments of

Agriculture and Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency,

although generally satisfied with CIESIN’s performance, will cease funding

CIESIN once the remaining funds are spent, principally because of tight

budgets and higher priority, mission-related requirements. Because of the

pending loss of most of its current funding sources, CIESIN has instituted a

strategy for competing for grants and contracts from federal, state, and

local government agencies; private companies; foreign governments; and

international organizations. As of June 1995, CIESIN officials told us they

had submitted or were planning to submit 29 competitive proposals.

NASA will continue to provide funds for CIESIN to incorporate

socioeconomic data as an essential part of its Earth Observing System

Data and Information System2

 and develop and operate a Socioeconomic

Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). The SEDAC mission focuses on data

related to human interactions in global environmental change and the

integration of this data with earth science information in the Earth

Observing System Data and Information System.

NASA officials believe they can appropriately oversee the management of a

SEDAC. To help CIESIN focus on the human interactions of global change,

NASA has established a SEDAC users’ working group, consisting of social

scientists and other experts from universities, state and federal agencies,

and environmental groups and other private institutions.

Under congressional direction, the National Science Foundation is

establishing centers for HDGC research and teaching. CIESIN is competing

for a Foundation grant to archive the basic research results produced

under the Foundation’s grants for dissemination to and use by the HDGC

research community and others. There would be no duplication, however,

between the functions to be performed by the Foundation’s HDGC centers

and CIESIN’s work for federal agencies since CIESIN provides researchers

with access to data and information; it does not do or sponsor basic

research.

Congress appropriated about $42 million in fiscal year 1993 to build

CIESIN’s headquarters. However, over several years, Congress withdrew the

money. Recently, the balance of $27 million was rescinded. Although

federal funding of a CIESIN headquarters facility is no longer applicable,

NASA’s support of CIESIN’s facilities infrastructure is still an open issue.

2

Earth Observing System: Funding Requirements for NASA’s EOSDIS (GAO/AIMD-95-153FS, June 8,

1995).

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Under governmentwide cost principles, NASA will only be able to support

CIESIN’s current leased facilities to a level sufficient to support SEDAC

activities.

In the course of our work, we noted two matters that could help maximize

the usefulness of CIESIN’s work and ensure that NASA’s noncompetitive

approach to contracting for the SEDAC was appropriately justified. The

Departments of Agriculture and Defense and the Environmental

Protection Agency will have spent over $15 million by the time they

terminate their current relationships with CIESIN. The products that CIESIN

has provided, however, have not been examined for their potential

usefulness to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.3

 Such an

examination could help identify any CIESIN products relevant to the needs

and priorities of the Research Program. Also, NASA justified awarding a

noncompetitive contract to CIESIN for creation and operation of the SEDAC

on the basis that it was directed by statute. We disagree with NASA’s basis

for the noncompetitive award. Prior to exercising the next 1-year option

on the contract that is due to occur in June 1996, NASA should determine

whether there is justification for a noncompetitive award to CIESIN.

CIESIN’s Mission According to CIESIN officials, CIESIN’s mission is to provide access to, and

enhance the use of, information worldwide on human interactions in the

environment and to serve the needs of scientists and public and private

decisionmakers. CIESIN uses computer and communications technology to

provide tools to search for, obtain and understand data. Some of its

current activities include (1) providing information on the human aspects

of global environmental change to the research and policy communities;

(2) furnishing computer tools for data access, research, and analysis

across academic disciplines; (3) serving as a bridge between the

socioeconomic and natural science research communities; (4) operating

the SEDAC; (5) managing the U.S. Global Change Research Information

Office; and (6) continuing the development of its Information Cooperative.

The Information Cooperative is being developed to enable worldwide

cataloging of data archives to be shared over the Internet. It is intended to

enable rapid access to information about human activity and its

relationship to the environment through a network of U.S. federal entities,

including NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

3

The U.S. Global Change Research Program was established by Congress in 1990 to provide a U.S.

research program to understand and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global

change. A committee of 15 federal entities was created to increase the effectiveness of federal global

change research efforts.

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Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Agency

for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry; state and regional

environmental information systems; U. N. agencies, such as the World

Health Organization; other multilateral entities, such as the Organization

of American States and the World Bank; individual foreign countries,

including China and Poland; and selected nongovernmental organizations

and international scientific research programs. Members of the

Information Cooperative work with CIESIN to make their HDGC-related

databases compatible with and accessible through CIESIN’s computer

network and to maintain those databases. CIESIN plans to continue to work

on broadening the database capabilities and data sources supporting its

mission. Further information on CIESIN’s Information Cooperative is in

appendix I.

CIESIN’s Funding To date, CIESIN has received most of its funding from federal agencies,

including the Departments of Defense and Agriculture, the Environmental

Protection Agency, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and NASA,

primarily through earmarked appropriations—portions of lump-sum

amounts appropriated to agencies for general purposes. Appropriations

for CIESIN through fiscal year 1995 totaled over $89 million, exclusive of

over $42 million provided for building a CIESIN headquarters facility, which

was subsequently withdrawn. Through June 1995, CIESIN was furnished

over $82 million4

 by federal agencies and had used almost $74 million, as

shown in table 1. Nonfederal sources of funding for CIESIN totaled about

$505,000 through June 1995. Most of this funding has been fees from

members of CIESIN.

4

The difference between the $89 million appropriated and the $82 million received by CIESIN, as of

June 30, 1995, is related to federal agencies’ retaining funds in electronic accounts until they are

needed.

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Table 1: CIESIN’s Federal Sources of Funds

Dollars in millions

Funding source

Funds made

available through

6/30/95

Funds spent

through 6/30/95 Funds remaining

Time frame when funds

will no longer be

available

NASA $64.64 $59.90 $4.74 Mid-fiscal year 1996 for

grants; SEDAC contract

extended until June

1996—then year to year

Department of Defense 6.55 5.03a 1.52 December 31, 1995

Environmental Protection Agency 6.33 4.46 1.87 Summer 1996

Department of Agriculture 2.43 2.17 0.26 September 1996

Office of Science and Technology Policy 2.00 0.08 1.92 Early 1999

Miscellaneous grants/contracts 0.19 0.19 0 June 1995

Subtotal 82.14 71.83 10.31

Encumbrances and commitments 0 2.08 –2.08

Total $82.14 $73.91 $8.23

a$1.13 million of these funds had been made available to CIESIN, but had not been spent as of

6/30/95.

Because CIESIN funding was largely specifically designated, the funding

agencies initially had to work with CIESIN to find functions or activities for

CIESIN to perform that related to their missions. These agencies used

various mechanisms, including grants, cooperative agreements, and

contracts, to provide funds to CIESIN for work that generally fell into three

main categories: (1) obtaining data sets, (2) integrating data systems, and

(3) developing software support retrieval and analysis of data. For

example, CIESIN’s work for the Department of Agriculture includes five

tasks under that agency’s Global Change Data Assessment and Integration

Project: (1) data survey, assessment, integration and access; (2) data

rescue; (3) Geographic Information Systems; (4) knowledge transfer; and

(5) laboratory support.

Officials at the federal agencies providing significant funding for CIESIN

told us that, in the absence of actual or anticipated earmarks, funding of

CIESIN would not have been requested because budgets were tight and that

they all had higher priority, mission-related requirements. Of the federal

agencies currently funding CIESIN, only NASA plans to do so after the

remaining funds are used.

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NASA’s continued funding of CIESIN is for developing and operating a SEDAC.

The SEDAC is one of nine Distributed Active Archive Centers under NASA’s

Earth Observing System Data and Information System.5

 The SEDAC is to

develop and implement innovative activities that integrate data from both

the social and natural sciences and respond to high priority information

needs of policy decisionmakers. The SEDAC is also to make the HDGC data it

holds—and the information about the earth science held by the eight other

centers—easily available to the scientific community.6

NASA noncompetitively awarded the SEDAC contract to CIESIN in June 1994

for 1 year with up to four 1-year extensions. In June 1995, NASA exercised

the first of these extensions, which runs to June 1996. NASA officials told us

that, subject to an annual review, they plan to fund the SEDAC at about

$5.7 million each year. This total amount is less than half of the average

annual funding CIESIN received from federal agencies prior to fiscal year

1995.

CIESIN had an increasing flow of operating funds through fiscal year 1992.

However, federal agencies’ funding has been decreasing in recent years, as

shown in table 2.

Table 2: Funding Available to CIESIN

From Federal Agencies Dollars in millions by fiscal year

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995

$3.90 $9.35 $29.83 $23.74 $11.49 $3.84a

aAs of 6/30/95.

As a result of decreasing funding and in anticipation of the pending loss of

most of its current funding sources, CIESIN has been developing and

implementing a strategy to find new customers from domestic,

international, governmental, and commercial sources. As of June 1995,

CIESIN had submitted 17 proposals and was preparing 12 more. The

submitted proposals went to federal agencies, state and local government

agencies, and the United Nations. The planned proposals would be funded

5

These nine centers are currently online and interoperable with each other. The SEDAC provides

HDGC data; the other eight archive space and ground based earth science measurements.

6

Since at least the late 1980s, scientific advisory groups have been supporting the need for HDGC data

to help evaluate global change. For example, in 1992 the National Academy of Sciences, Committee on

the HDGC, recommended “that the federal government should establish an ongoing program to ensure

that appropriate datasets for research on the HDGC are routinely acquired, properly prepared for use,

and made available to researchers on simple and affordable terms.”

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by a mixture of private corporations, foreign countries, and state or

federal agencies.

CIESIN has also competed for and won peer recognition. For example,

CIESIN won a competition against 22 other nominees for the

Computerworld Smithsonian Award in the category of Environment,

Energy, and Agriculture for its Gateway software, which is briefly

described in appendix I. This award honors creative and innovative uses of

technology from throughout the world.

In addition, the National Research Council’s Committee on Geophysical

and Environmental Data has recommended consideration of CIESIN as a

World Data Center to the International Council of Scientific Unions.7

 The

recommendation was agreed to at an early 1995 meeting of the

International Council of Scientific Unions.

Other awards that CIESIN has competed for, and/or won, are identified in

CIESIN’s letter found in appendix III.

NASA’s Oversight of

CIESIN

In 1994, NASA brought CIESIN under a contract, in place of a grant, to ensure

the development and operation of a SEDAC. As the SEDAC operator, CIESIN is

primarily responsible for providing users with access to HDGC data and

information. It neither does nor sponsors basic HDGC research.

In early 1994, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet Earth

wrote that “by rescoping CIESIN’s mission to include only SEDAC-related

activities, NASA now possesses the necessary expertise to manage CIESIN.

Because the context within which SEDAC will operate is data management

and integration, NASA is more uniquely qualified for this role than any other

federal agency.”

To help it oversee CIESIN’s management of the SEDAC, NASA established a

SEDAC Users Working Group in November 1994. The working group

consists of social scientists and other experts from universities, state and

federal agencies, and environmental groups and other private institutions.

According to one of the co-chairs of the working group,8

 the working

group has significant influence over the SEDAC, and it makes sure the SEDAC

7

World Data Centers are currently operating in the United States, Australia, Russia and China. The

purpose of these centers is to provide a free and unrestricted exchange of data among scientists

around the world.

8

The other co-chair is the SEDAC project scientist—a CIESIN employee.

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serves the needs of both the earth sciences and socioeconomic segments

of the global change research community. The working group has thus far

offered several recommendations for improvements.

National Science

Foundation’s HDGC

Centers

In the Conference Report explaining the Veterans Affairs and Independent

Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1995,9

 Congress provided the

National Science Foundation with $6 million “. . . for a global climate

change initiative for a center or consortium for the human dimensions of

global climate change.” In December 1994, the Foundation announced the

special funding opportunity to facilitate HDGC research, promote HDGC

education, and foster interdisciplinary research collaborations on HDGC

issues. The Foundation intends to sponsor a variety of HDGC activities

under the funding opportunity.

The Foundation received 52 proposals for its funding opportunity

competition. One was from CIESIN, in which it proposed to provide a data

archive and resource center for the HDGC research community. Thus, as

HDGC researchers work under Foundation grants, CIESIN would provide

electronic data and software support services. When the research is

completed, CIESIN would archive and provide access to the research data.10

Consequently, there would be no duplication between the functions to be

performed by the Foundation’s HDGC research centers and research teams

and the functions CIESIN would perform.

CIESIN’s Building

Requirements

Through the early part of fiscal year 1993, Congress had appropriated over

$46 million for the proposed CIESIN building but in subsequent years

gradually withdrew the funding. In the fiscal year 1993 Veteran Affairs and

Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, Congress earmarked

$42 million for the CIESIN headquarters facility.11 Later, in July 1993,

Congress reduced the amount of available appropriations to $37 million.12

In October of that same year, Congress directed that another $10 million13

9

H.R. Rep. 103-715 at 50 (1994).

10It is the policy of the National Science Foundation not to provide information on how well a proposal

has competed, during a competition. Therefore, no information was available as of September 14, 1995.

11H.R. Rep. (Conf.) No. 102-902 at 70 (1992).

12P.L. No. 103-50, 107 Stat. 266 (1993).

13H.R. Rep. (Conf.) 103-273 at 35 (1993).

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not be used until completion of a NASA Inspector General report.14 The

fiscal year 1995 appropriations act specifically rescinded $10 million.15 The

balance of $27 million was recently rescinded by law.16 The earmarked

items in NASA’s fiscal year 1991 and 1992 appropriations included a total of

$4.4 million for planning and designing a headquarters facility for CIESIN. In

February 1994, as a result of its Inspector General’s report, which

questioned the need for the building, NASA issued a stop-work order on the

engineering design work, freezing finalization of the building design. In all,

over $3 million was spent on planning and designing the facility. Another

$75,000 to $150,000 will be spent to terminate the facility contract. The

balance of over $1 million will remain with NASA in the appropriate account

for expired unobligated balances.

Although the question of federal funding of a headquarters facility for

CIESIN is no longer applicable, the question of NASA’s support for CIESIN’s

facilities infrastructure is still an open issue, primarily because, as

previously noted, CIESIN’s support from federal agencies has been

declining. Unless CIESIN is successful in its efforts to generate new

business, further reductions will occur with the cessation of the current

support CIESIN is receiving from the Departments of Agriculture and

Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency. Such prospects raise

the issue of the extent of NASA’s future support of CIESIN’s infrastructure

under the SEDAC contract, especially under governmentwide guidance for

federal agencies’ use in determining the cost of work performed by

nonprofit organizations, such as CIESIN.

17

Under the government’s cost principles for nonprofit organizations, the

costs of idle capacity are allowable for a reasonable period of

time—ordinarily not to exceed 1 year—if the facilities were necessary

when acquired but are now idle due to changes in program requirements.

CIESIN is currently located in various leased facilities in Washington, D.C.,

and Ann Arbor and University Center, Michigan. NASA has not yet evaluated

the extent to which it should support CIESIN’s infrastructure for SEDAC

purposes once other federal agencies’ funding of CIESIN ceases. If NASA

must reduce its support of CIESIN’s facilities, it could consider the

cost/benefit of various alternatives, including reducing the overall space at

currently leased facilities, consolidating activities at fewer existing

14The final report was entitled CIESIN, Lewis Research Center, NASA Office of the Inspector General,

Mar. 28, 1994.

15P.L. No. 103-327, 108 Stat. 2326 (1994).

16P.L. No. 104-19, 109 Stat. 239 (1995).

17Office of Management and Budget Circular A-122, “Cost Principles for Nonprofit Organizations.”

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facilities, and relocating to reasonably accessible vacant federally owned

space.

NASA officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center told us they would be

examining the continuing need for NASA’s support of CIESIN’s current

management structure, as well as its facilities, under the SEDAC contract.

The Value and Future

Use of CIESIN’s

Completed Work Have

Not Been Determined

Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, and

Department of Agriculture officials expressed general satisfaction with

CIESIN’s performance, including the technical quality and timeliness of its

work. These agencies will have spent over $15 million by the time they

terminate their current relationships with CIESIN. The products they receive

from CIESIN’s efforts have not been examined for their potential usefulness

to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Federal agency officials we

spoke with said such an examination would be useful in identifying the

products relevant to the needs and priorities of the global research

community.

Noncompetitive

SEDAC Contract

Requires

Rejustification

NASA’s award to CIESIN for the SEDAC was not competed. NASA based its

justification for other than full and open competition on the belief that the

award of a sole-source contract to CIESIN for the SEDAC was statutorily

authorized18 and, therefore, was an appropriate exception to the

competitive requirements set forth in the Competition in Contracting Act.

However, we believe that the award to CIESIN was not directed by statute.

The Comptroller General has held that language in congressional

committee reports and other legislative history about how funds are

expected to be spent do not impose legal requirements on federal

agencies.19 Only the language of the enacted law imposes such

requirements. In this instance, the conference report, rather than the law,

called for CIESIN to function as a SEDAC. Thus, the noncompetitive award to

CIESIN could not properly be justified on the basis that it was statutorily

authorized.

The next opportunity NASA will have to determine whether the

noncompetitive award to CIESIN can be justified as an exception to the

competitive requirements in the Competition in Contracting Act on a basis

1810 U.S.C. 2304(c)(5).

1955 Comp. Gen. 307, 319 (1975).

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other than that it was statutorily authorized is prior to exercising the next

1-year option in June 1996.

Recommendations We recommend that the NASA Administrator direct

• procurement officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center to determine, by

the end of fiscal year 1996, the extent of the CIESIN infrastructure that

should be supported under the SEDAC contract and, if this determination

shows that a reduction in NASA’s support is warranted, NASA should

examine the cost/benefit of various alternative actions, including

relocating the SEDAC to excess federally owned space that is reasonably

accessible to the SEDAC-user community;

• program officials, in conjunction with the U.S. Global Change Research

Program’s Subcommittee on Global Change Research and other

appropriate interested parties, to evaluate, and incorporate into Earth

Observing System Data and Information System, any useful CIESIN

products developed for the Departments of Agriculture and Defense and

the Environmental Protection Agency; and

• procurement officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center to reexamine

the Competition in Contracting Act exemptions to full and open

competition and, prior to exercising the next 1-year option on the contract,

determine whether an appropriate exemption justifies continuation of the

noncompetitive award of the SEDAC contract to CIESIN.

Agency Comments We obtained formal written comments from both NASA and CIESIN. NASA

agreed with our recommendations. NASA officials stated that they

appreciated our effort to review CIESIN. (See app. II for NASA’s comments.)

CIESIN generally agreed with the report and elaborated on various points

discussed in the report. (See app. III for CIESIN’s comments.)

Scope and

Methodology

Our methodology included examining applicable laws, regulations, and

policies; interviewing CIESIN and federal agency officials; reviewing plans,

contract files, and financial and program reports; and accessing and

testing CIESIN’s databases. Specifically, we discussed the nature of CIESIN’s

mission and its past, present, and potential future activities with CIESIN

officials. Also, we obtained documentation of its funding sources from

CIESIN and the federal agencies involved. The material reviewed included

federal awards audit reports, audited financial statements, Defense

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Contract Audit Agency reports, and NASA and Department of Agriculture

Inspector General reports.

In evaluating CIESIN’s future funding level and building requirements, we

discussed future funding plans for CIESIN with federal agency officials,

obtained information on CIESIN’s ongoing and planned activities, and

discussed the funding levels needed to perform the SEDAC mission with

NASA headquarters and Goddard Space Flight Center officials. Further, we

reviewed documents associated with the establishment and negotiation of

the SEDAC contract, visited CIESIN’s main operating facilities, and obtained

information on current and planned staffing levels from CIESIN officials.

We discussed NASA’s role in overseeing work on the human dimensions of

global change with NASA, National Science Foundation, and Office of

Science and Technology Policy officials. We also reviewed documents and

held discussions with National Science Foundation and CIESIN officials

related to (1) the National Science Foundation’s approach to carrying out

congressional direction to establish HDGC centers or a consortium and

(2) the relationship of such centers to CIESIN activities.

We conducted our review at CIESIN in University Center and Ann Arbor,

Michigan, and Washington, D.C.; NASA headquarters, Washington, D.C.,

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; NASA Inspector

General at the Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio; the Department of

Defense, Washington, D.C.; Environmental Protection Agency,

Washington, D.C., and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina;

Department of Agriculture headquarters, Washington, D.C., and Greenbelt,

Maryland; Office of Science and Technology Policy, Washington, D.C.;

Office of Management and Budget, Washington, D.C.; National Science

Foundation, Arlington, Virginia; and the U.S. Global Change Research

Program, Arlington, Virginia. We conducted our review from October 1994

to August 1995 in accordance with generally accepted government

auditing standards.

Unless you announce its contents earlier, we plan no further distribution

of this report for 30 days from its issue date. At that time, we will send

copies to the Chairmen of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science,

and Transportation and of the House and Senate Appropriations

Committees; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the

Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office

of the President; the NASA Administrator; the Secretary of Agriculture; the

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Secretary of Defense; and the Administrator of the Environmental

Protection Agency. We will also provide copies to others upon request.

Please contact me at (202) 512-8412 if you or your staff have any questions.

The major contributors to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Sincerely yours,

David R. Warren

Director, Defense Management

 and NASA Issues

Page 13 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Contents

Letter 1

Appendix I 

Consortium for

International Earth

Science Information

Network’s

Information

Cooperative

16

Appendix II 

Comments From the

National Aeronautics

and Space

Administration

17

Appendix III 

Comments From the

Consortium for

International Earth

Science Information

Network

20

Appendix IV 

Major Contributors to

This Report

27

Tables Table 1: CIESIN’s Federal Sources of Funds 5

Table 2: Funding Available to CIESIN from Federal Agencies 6

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Contents

Abbreviations

CIESIN Consortium for International Earth Science Information

Network

HDGC human dimensions of global change

NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration

SEDAC Socioeconomic Data Applications Center

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Appendix I 

Consortium for International Earth Science

Information Network’s Information

Cooperative

The Information Cooperative has been developed and is being expanded

by the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network

(CIESIN) to allow the cataloging of data archives worldwide, which will be

shared over the Internet. The Information Cooperative facilitates CIESIN’s

accomplishing its mission of providing access to worldwide information

on human interactions in the environment. The data may be in the form of

the actual data, or information about the data and how best to obtain the

information from its original source.

The Information Cooperative

• provides a means for communication and coordination between global

change research organizations,

• fosters common standards to access data, and

• makes data available to nations with developing and transitional

economies.

An important part of the Information Cooperative is the Gateway software,

which is a single means of entry to a large number of databases by using

state-of-the-art search software and Internet access. Because various

databases around the world are often incompatible, the Gateway allows

users to simultaneously search many different databases and to rapidly

identify and obtain data from various database sources without knowing

where the data are coming from—seamless searching.

Much of the Information Cooperative is still under development. The

connection points currently online, in addition to CIESIN, include the SEDAC,

the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency,

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Agency for Toxic

Substances and Disease Registry, U.S. Global Change Master Directory,

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Great Lakes

Regional Environment Information System, Great Lakes Information

Management Resource, World Health Organization, Roper Center, World

Bank, and the country of Estonia.

Further information about CIESIN can be obtained from CIESIN’s World Wide

Web site on the Internet (http://www.ciesin.org).

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Appendix II 

Comments From the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration

Page 17 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix II 

Comments From the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration

Page 18 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix II 

Comments From the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration

Page 19 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

Page 20 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

See comment 1.

See comment 2.

Page 21 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

Page 22 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

Page 23 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

Page 24 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

Page 25 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix III 

Comments From the Consortium for

International Earth Science Information

Network

The following are comments on the CIESIN letter dated September 11, 1995.

GAO Comments 1.Our focus was on the initial time period when CIESIN and the agencies

began to have a technical and business relationship. Most agencies, at that

time, had structured their on-going activities without considering a role for

CIESIN. When funding for CIESIN was earmarked, they had to adjust their

activities to do so.

2.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and our

office held numerous discussions about the basis of the justification NASA

cited for exemption from the Competition in Contracting Act. However,

any decision about the justification for exemption from other than free

and open competition would be NASA’s.

Page 26 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
Appendix IV 

Major Contributors to This Report

National Security and

International Affairs

Division, Washington,

D.C.

James F. Wiggins, Associate Director

Frank Degnan, Assistant Director

David W. Rowan, Evaluator-in-Charge

Lawrence A. Kiser, Senior Evaluator

Office of Information

Management and

Communications,

Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth F. Blevins, Librarian

Carol F. Johnson, Librarian

William F. Tuceling, Librarian

(709107) Page 27 GAO/NSIAD-96-13 Earth Science Information Network
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