United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to the Ranking Minority Member,

Committee on Governmental Affairs,

U.S. Senate

August 1996 NASA PERSONNEL

Challenges to

Achieving Workforce

Reductions

G O A

years

1921 - 1996

GAO/NSIAD-96-176

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-272392 

August 2, 1996

The Honorable John Glenn

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Governmental Affairs

United States Senate

Dear Senator Glenn:

You requested that we examine the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration’s (NASA) efforts and plans to decrease its staffing levels. In

the early 1990s, NASA had projected an essentially flat workforce profile of

about 25,500 full-time equivalent (FTE)1

 employees through fiscal year

2000. NASA currently plans to lower this figure to about 17,500 by fiscal

year 2000. This report discusses NASA’s progress and its approach to

achieving further reductions.

Results in Brief By the end of fiscal year 1996, NASA will be about half way to its goal.

NASA’s success in reducing FTEs is principally due to the use of voluntary

separation incentive payments, or “buyouts,” to eligible employees in

exchange for their voluntary retirement or resignation from the

government. About two-thirds of the 4,000 employees who left NASA in 1994

and 1995 took buyouts.

NASA does not yet have fully developed plans to reduce its personnel level

by about another 4,000 FTEs to meet its overall goal by fiscal year 2000 and

may not be able to do so without involuntarily separating employees. NASA

projections show that voluntary attrition should meet the downsizing goal

through fiscal year 1998, but NASA estimates that attrition will not provide

sufficient losses by fiscal year 1999. Thus, NASA officials intend to start

planning a reduction-in-force during fiscal year 1998, if enough NASA

employees are not retiring or resigning voluntarily.

NASA’s ability to achieve the 17,500-FTE goal is subject to major

uncertainties, including the shifting of program management from

headquarters to field centers and the award of a single prime contract for

the management of the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. Also, in

1995, NASA proposed space science institutes as a potentially beneficial

approach to maintain or improve the quality of its science program in the

1

According to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance, an FTE generally includes 

260 compensable days, or 2,080 hours, excluding overtime and holiday hours.

Page 1 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

face of organizational streamlining. However, its efforts to create such

institutes have been discontinued because proposed legislation, which

would have eased the transfer of its employees to the institutes, was not

favorably reviewed in the executive branch. The institutes could have had

a potentially large FTE-reduction impact. NASA intends to seek alternatives

to the institutes.

In view of the uncertainties affecting NASA’s ability to achieve significant

reductions in personnel to meet likely future budgets, Congress may wish

to consider requiring NASA to submit a workforce restructuring plan for

achieving its fiscal year 2000 FTE goal.

Background Since NASA was established in 1958, its civil service workforce has

fluctuated widely. In 1967, during the Apollo program, the workforce was

at about 35,900. In the 1970s, due to unfunded programs, the workforce

shrank, with several thousand employees involuntarily separated during

the middle of the decade. By 1980, the workforce had stabilized near

21,000. It remained close to that level until 1986, when the space shuttle

Challenger accident forced a reexamination of NASA. In the mid- and late

1980s, NASA began some ambitious new programs and its workforce began

to grow again in the latter part of the decade and into the early

1990s—peaking in 1992 at more than 25,000.

When the current administration took office in 1993, it initiated steps to

reduce the size of the overall federal workforce. An executive order in

February 1993 directed that the workforce be reduced by 4 percent

(100,000 employees) by the end of fiscal year 1995. Then, in September

1993, the National Performance Review (NPR) recommended a reduction of

252,000 federal employees by 1999. By the time Congress passed the

Federal Workforce Restructuring Act in March 1994, which legislated an

overall reduction of 272,900 federal employees by 1999, NASA was already

cutting its workforce, which was more than 24,000 in fiscal year 1993, in

response to the executive order and the NPR recommendation. NASA

currently plans to achieve an FTE level of about 17,500 employees by fiscal

year 2000, an overall reduction of about 8,000 from its previously planned

level for that year.

The 17,500-FTE goal is predicated on the President’s fiscal year 1996

budget, which requested $14.3 billion for NASA, with future projections of

$13.9 billion, $13.7 billion, $13.4 billion, and $13.2 billion, respectively, for

fiscal years 1997 to 2000. NASA’s fiscal year 1996 budget was approved at

Page 2 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

$13.8 billion. In a message to NASA employees regarding the fiscal year 1997

budget request of $13.8 billion, the NASA Administrator stated that, “Beyond

FY 1997, there are obvious uncertainties. The out-year projections are

significantly lower than previous projections: $13.1 billion for FY 1998;

$12.4 billion for FY 1999; and $11.6 billion for FY 2000.” He went on to say

that

“As Administrator, I have decided not to take any precipitous action in FY 1996 to work

toward these figures because to do so would involve a major disruption to our employees.

It would not be fair to put them through this process to reach projections that are not hard

and fast.”

Personnel Reductions

in Recent Years

Through fiscal year 1995, NASA reduced its previously planned fiscal year

2000 FTE goal by over 3,000 FTEs, and it was planning to increase the

aggregate reduction to about 4,000 FTEs in 1996. As shown in table 1, NASA

had just over 24,700 FTE personnel in fiscal year 1993. This number

dropped below 23,100 in fiscal year 1995, and it is expected to decrease to

about 21,500 in fiscal year 1996.

Table 1: Full-Time Permanent (FTP)

and FTE Staffs for Fiscal Years

1993-95

Occupation 1993 1994 1995

Scientists and engineers 13,321 12,728 12,042

Professional administrative 4,692 4,460 4,221

Clerical 2,599 2,370 2,100

GS technician 2,420 2,294 2,024

Wage board 648 564 487

FTP staff 23,680 22,417 20,874

FTE staff 24,731 24,265 23,075

Source: NASA.

Buyouts Were the Principal

Means of Achieving the

Reductions

A key feature of the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994 was the

authorization for agencies to pay up to $25,000 to separating workers—a

buyout. Initially, NASA planned to offer this buyout to no more than 

825 personnel. However, after nearly 2,000 employees indicated interest,

NASA decided to offer 1,252 buyouts in 1994. This buyout was accepted by

1,178 employees. The buyout allocations focused on Headquarters,

Marshall Space Flight Center, Lewis Research Center, and Kennedy Space

Center—the installations most affected by the space station’s redesign and

program management restructuring. No occupational categories were

Page 3 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

targeted in the 1994 buyout, but members of the Senior Executive Service,

attorneys at Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, and

astronauts were not permitted buyouts, in part, because NASA felt that

critical skills would be lost if these employees separated.

After the 1994 buyout, NASA was confronted with an even larger

downsizing challenge when the President’s fiscal year 1996 budget request

reduced NASA’s budgets through fiscal year 2000 by $4.6 billion. NASA

announced its intention to cover this reduction by cutting its

infrastructure, including personnel, rather than canceling or cutting back

program initiatives. The NASA Administrator tasked the agency to conduct

a zero base review (ZBR), which included examining every civil service and

support contractor position in NASA to find and eliminate overlap and over

staffing. One of the review’s conclusions was that NASA’s civil service

workforce could be reduced to about 17,500 by the end of the decade

without eliminating core programs. In anticipation of lower numbers of

personnel, NASA offered another buyout in 1995. All employees were

eligible and it was accepted by 1,482 employees.

The 2,660 buyouts represented about 66 percent of the more than 

4,000 employees who left NASA during fiscal years 1994 and 1995, as shown

in table 2.

Table 2: Total and Buyout Losses in

Fiscal Years 1994-95 by General

Occupational Category Occupation

Total

reductions

Number of

buyouts

Percent

buyouts

Scientists and engineers 1,870 1,224 65

Professional administrative 1,003 663 66

GS technician 484 353 73

Clerical 577 361 63

Wage board 104 59 57

Total 4,038 2,660 66

Source: NASA.

NASA’s scientists and engineers had the largest reductions in numbers, but

the smallest proportionate reductions, as shown in table 3. Consequently,

as of September 30, 1995, scientists and engineers made up almost

58 percent of NASA’s FTP employees—slightly higher than a few years ago

when they were about 56 percent of NASA’s workforce.

Page 4 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

Table 3: Net Loss Numbers and

Percentages by General Occupational

Category for Fiscal Years 1993

Through 1995

Occupation Hires Losses Net loss FTPs

Percent

of loss

Scientists and engineers

1993 174 414 240 13,321 1.8

1994 342 938 596 12,728 4.7

1995 231 932 701 12,042 5.8

Professional administrative

1993 106 235 129 4,692 2.7

1994 160 554 394 4,460 8.8

1995 90 449 359 4,221 8.5

GS technicians

1993 10 91 81 2,420 3.3

1994 34 184 150 2,294 6.5

1995 10 300 290 2,024 14.3

Clerical

1993 92 159 67 2,599 2.6

1994 171 323 152 2,370 6.4

1995 102 254 152 2,100 7.2

Wage board

1993 6 21 15 648 2.3

1994 33 60 27 564 4.8

1995 15 44 29 487 6.0

Source: NASA.

NASA personnel managers consider the two buyouts a success. Given the

rate of employee turnover experienced in the 2 years preceding the

buyouts, they estimate that as many as 2,000 workers left the agency

sooner than they would have without a buyout.

Future Personnel

Reductions May

Require Involuntary

Separations

As previously noted, buyouts accounted for about two-thirds of the

employees leaving NASA in fiscal years 1994 and 1995. However, the buyout

authority has expired. Without buyout authority, NASA personnel

projections as of March 1996 showed that voluntary retirements and other

separations should enable the agency to continue to meet its downsizing

goals through fiscal year 1998, but attrition would not be sufficient in fiscal

year 1999 to meet the proposed budgets of about half of NASA’s centers or

for the agency as a whole. As a result, NASA personnel officials said a

reduction-in-force would be required by late fiscal year 1998.

Page 5 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

One element of the expected difficulty in 1999 is that about 70 percent of

NASA’s planned personnel reductions in the 1996-2000 period are scheduled

in 1999 and 2000, with most of those—1,730 out of 2,822—scheduled for

1999. A NASA personnel official explained that reductions were being

scheduled for late in the period, in part, to allow sufficient time to work

out the details of the conversion to a space shuttle single prime contract at

Kennedy Space Center. With the difficult launch schedule associated with

the space station, NASA officials were concerned about mission

performance if they lowered personnel levels too quickly at Kennedy.

One of NASA’s major concerns is ensuring a proper skill mix throughout the

agency. Currently, NASA’s strategy to deal with this concern is to rely on

normal attrition, limited hiring focused on the most critical areas, and

redeploying employees. NASA officials intend to refine their workforce

planning efforts later this year. They stated that these refinements will

include developing more detailed demographic information and turnover

predictions, identifying specific skill-mix requirements, determining skill

excesses and shortages, developing cross-training and relocation

opportunities, and implementing specific programs and policies to help

achieve an appropriate skill mix for the 17,500 FTE level.

Unknown Personnel

Impacts of

Management and

Operational Changes

NASA’s efforts to meet its planned FTE level while avoiding involuntary

separations will be affected by the results of several management and

operational changes, including the shifting of program management from

headquarters to field centers and the use of a single prime contractor for

managing the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center.

Program Management

Shifting From

Headquarters to Field

Centers

NASA is in the process of shifting program management control from its

headquarters program offices to the field centers. Prior to the ZBR, the NPR

recommended several management changes at NASA, including reducing its

headquarters workforce by 50 percent, eliminating duplication of

functions at headquarters and the centers, and reducing management

layers. The ZBR, which was undertaken to develop strategies to meet

funding reductions, proposed giving the centers increased management

control. The ZBR defined the centers’ missions and designated each as a

Center of Excellence; that is, having preeminence within the agency for a

recognized area of technical competence. A center’s mission denotes its

role or responsibility in supporting NASA’s five major enterprises: Mission

to Planet Earth, Aeronautics, Human Exploration and Development of

Space, Space Science, and Space Technology. All program implementation

Page 6 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

responsibilities previously performed by headquarters offices are being

reassigned to the field centers. In essence, it is intended that headquarters

focus on what the agency does and why, while centers focus on executing

programs.

Table 4 shows the proposed ZBR reductions for program and staff offices in

headquarters, and table 5 shows proposed reductions by NASA installation

as of March 1996.

Table 4: Headquarters Reductions

Proposed by the ZBR

Office

June 1995

FTE ceiling

FY 2000

FTE goal

FTE

reduction

Percent of

reduction

Space Flight 156 88 68 44

Aeronautics 101 61 40 40

Space Communications 47 28 19 40

Space Science 121 68 53 44

Life and Microgravity

Sciences and Applications 78 49 29 37

Mission to Planet Earth 80 58 22 28

Space Access and Technology 102 63 39 38

Safety and Mission Assurance 86 46 40 47

Staff offices 866 550 316 36

Total 1,637 1,011 626 38

Note: As of June 1996, the headquarters offices’ FTE levels were under further review.

Source: NASA.

Page 7 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

Table 5: FTE Reduction Goals by

Installation FTE allocations Reduction

Installation 1996 2000 Number Percent

Ames Research Center 1,660 1,415 245 15

Dryden Flight Research Centera 450 607 +157 +35

Goddard Space Flight Center 3,770 3,071 699 19

Johnson Space Center 3,154 2,559 595 19

Kennedy Space Center 2,270 1,135 1,135 50

Langley Research Center 2,622 2,454 168 6

Lewis Research Center 2,396 2,059 337 14

Marshall Space Flight Center 3,157 2,519 638 20

Space Station Program Office 349 349 0 0

Stennis Space Center 219 208 11 5

NASA Headquarters 1,508 1,112 396 26

Total 21,555 17,488 4,067 19

aIncrease due to transferring aircraft from other centers, a consolidation that was uncertain at the

time of our work.

Source: NASA.

Personnel Reductions Due

to Single Prime Contract

for Space Shuttle

Management

In November 1995, NASA selected United Space Alliance—a Rockwell

International and Lockheed Martin partnership—as the prime contractor

for space flight operations. Although NASA will retain responsibility for

launch decisions, NASA personnel will be less involved in day-to-day

operations. Thus, fewer civil servants will be required to manage the

program. However, conversion efforts are still underway and have not

reached the point where NASA officials are able to judge the full extent to

which NASA personnel will be involved in overseeing the contractor’s

operations.

Despite this uncertainty, NASA estimates that it should be able to make

personnel reductions in the range of 700 to 1,100 FTEs at the Kennedy

Space Center. Because the length of the transition period is uncertain,

NASA personnel officials show these reductions occurring in 1999 and 2000.

However, NASA officials believe the personnel reductions at this center will

not be precipitous, but will occur more gradually over the transition

period.2

2

The NASA Administrator has reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to shuttle safety and said he would

not downsize the agency’s staffing in any way that would jeopardize shuttle safety. NASA recently

requested its Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel to review the space shuttle program, concentrating on

its safety. The Panel’s report is expected by the end of November.

Page 8 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

Further Efforts to

Establish Space

Science Institutes

Discontinued

During the course of the ZBR, the concept of institutes was identified as a

potentially beneficial approach to maintain or improve the quality of

national science in the face of organizational streamlining. The

recommendation was made to reshape NASA’s science program under a

reinvention strategy to bind NASA’s science program more closely to the

larger community that it serves. The strategy involved “privatization” of a

portion of NASA’s science program into a number of science institutes. The

purpose for establishing science institutes was to preserve and improve

the quality of NASA’s contributions to national science in the face of

reductions in the size of the federal workforce. Under its Science Institute

Plan, NASA intended to select universities, not-for-profit organizations, or

consortia to operate 11 institutes under competitively awarded contracts

or cooperative agreements to conduct research supporting the specific

missions of selected NASA field centers, among other purposes.

NASA was working with OMB to identify ways to make the transition to

institutes attractive to NASA personnel. Proposed legislation for the

agency’s fiscal year 1997 authorization bill was sent to OMB. The legislation

would have facilitated the institutes’ employing of NASA personnel by

relaxing current laws that restrict the employment of former federal

workers by the private sector and enabling NASA employees to retain the

bulk of their federal retirement benefits should they accept an offer of

institute employment. Each institute would make its own decisions on

hiring NASA employees.3

 This proposal was not favorably reviewed in the

executive branch, in part because of concern that covering former NASA

personnel with federal benefits after they became private-sector

employees would set a precedent to do the same for other federal

employees whose jobs are privatized. As shown in table 6, the potential

loss of civil service work years as a result of creating science institutes

would vary greatly from center to center.

3

Under the proposed legislation, NASA employees in charge of selecting the universities or

corporations to operate the new institutes would be prohibited from accepting employment at any

institute.

Page 9 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

Table 6: Potential Space Science

Institute Impact on Civil Service Work

Years

NASA Field Centers and

Proposed Science Institutes

Approximate loss of civil

service work years

Ames Research Center

Astrobiology Institute 334

Goddard Space Flight Center

Goddard Institute for Space Studies 20

National Space Science Data Center 12

Johnson Space Center

Biomedical Research Institute 20

Astromaterials Institute 30

Langley Research Center

Atmospheric Science Institute 237

Lewis Research Center

Microgravity Institute 371

Space Power Institute 259

Marshall Space Flight Center

Global Hydrology and Climate Center 168

Microgravity Institute (Materials & Biotechnology) 374

Space Science Institute (Astrophysics & Space

Physics) 164

Total 1,989

Source: NASA.

According to NASA officials, the extent to which NASA personnel would

voluntarily leave to accept the institutes’ offers of employment would

depend largely on the enactment of the proposed legislation designed to

ease such transfers. Without such legislation, NASA officials believe that the

number of employees voluntarily leaving NASA would likely be negligible.

On June 7, 1996, the NASA Administrator announced that, due to objections

to the proposed legislation from the Office of Government Ethics, the

Office of Personnel Management, and OMB, efforts to establish new science

institutes other than the Biomedical Research Institute at Johnson Space

Center would be discontinued. The Administrator stated that NASA did not

intend to migrate civil service functions and positions to institutes absent

legislative relief. However, NASA will continue to consider alternative

options to the proposed institutes.

Page 10 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

Matter for

Congressional

Consideration

NASA recently requested buyout authority from Congress. We have

previously reported that savings from buyouts generally exceed those

from reductions-in-force and that savings from downsizing largely depend,

among other things, on whether the workforce restructuring has been

effectively planned.4

As previously noted, NASA is currently involved in developing future

workforce plans to help ensure a proper skill mix to support its programs

and activities. In commenting on a draft of this report, NASA said it had a

human resource planning activity underway in support of its fiscal year

1998 budget request. We believe that the results of this effort would

provide useful information to Congress in reviewing both NASA’s request

for buyout authority and its fiscal year 1998 budget request. Therefore,

Congress may wish to consider requiring NASA to submit a workforce

restructuring plan for achieving its fiscal year 2000 FTE goal.

Agency Comments NASA officials concurred with our report and stated that it is a good

synopsis of the progress made and the problems remaining. NASA said that

civil service staffing at the Kennedy Space Center may not be able to go

below 1,360 FTEs. NASA indicated that it would reassess the size of the

reduction in preparing its fiscal year 1998 budget request. NASA also

summarized its reasons for wanting new buyout authority. NASA’s

comments are included in appendix I.

Scope and

Methodology

We researched NASA’s workforce history, reviewed NASA workforce

statistics and centers’ and headquarters’ downsizing plans, examined

workforce reviews and studies prepared by NASA discussing its downsizing

activities, and discussed with NASA officials how the most recent

reductions were achieved. We also examined projected workforce

statistics through fiscal year 2000 and obtained information on NASA’s

approach to achieving future downsizing goals.

We reviewed workforce statistics from three field centers—Goddard

Space Flight Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and Lewis Research

Center—and we reviewed the centers’ strategies for meeting future

reductions. We relied primarily on information contained in NASA’s Civil

Service Workforce Report for most of our statistical data. We did not

independently verify NASA’s statistics. The civil service workforce totals

4

Federal Downsizing: The Cost and Savings of Buyouts Versus Reductions-in-Force (GAO/GGD-96-63,

May 14, 1996). Also, see Workforce Reductions: Downsizing Strategies Used in Selected Organizations

(GAO/GGD-95-54, Mar. 13, 1995).

Page 11 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
B-272392 

discussed in this report reflect NASA’s planning at the time of our review.

The likelihood they will continue to be revised to reflect changes is high.

We conducted our review principally at NASA headquarters, Washington,

D.C., and the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. We also

discussed personnel-related issues with NASA officials at Marshall Space

Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, and Lewis Research Center, Cleveland,

Ohio. We performed our work from June 1995 to June 1996 in accordance

with generally accepted government auditing standards.

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

distribution of this report until 14 days from its issue date. At that time, we

will send copies of this report to appropriate congressional committees,

the NASA Administrator, the Director of OMB, and other interested parties

upon request.

If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please

contact me on (202) 512-4841. The major contributors to this report were

Frank Degnan, Lawrence Kiser, and Roberta Gaston.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Schulz

Associate Director,

 Defense Acquisitions Issues

Page 12 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
Page 13 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
Appendix I 

Comments From the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration

Note: We are not

publishing the three

enclosures to NASA’s

comments. These

enclosures included

copies of external

correspondence and

suggestions for technical

changes, which we

incorporated where

appropriate.

Page 14 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
Appendix I 

Comments From the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration

(709175) Page 15 GAO/NSIAD-96-176 NASA Personnel
Ordering Information

The first copy of each GAO report and testimony is free.

Additional copies are $2 each. Orders should be sent to the

following address, accompanied by a check or money order

made out to the Superintendent of Documents, when

necessary. VISA and MasterCard credit cards are accepted, also.

Orders for 100 or more copies to be mailed to a single address

are discounted 25 percent.

Orders by mail:

U.S. General Accounting Office

P.O. Box 6015

Gaithersburg, MD 20884-6015

or visit:

Room 1100

700 4th St. NW (corner of 4th and G Sts. NW)

U.S. General Accounting Office

Washington, DC

Orders may also be placed by calling (202) 512-6000 

or by using fax number (301) 258-4066, or TDD (301) 413-0006.

Each day, GAO issues a list of newly available reports and

testimony. To receive facsimile copies of the daily list or any

list from the past 30 days, please call (202) 512-6000 using a

touchtone phone. A recorded menu will provide information on

how to obtain these lists.

For information on how to access GAO reports on the INTERNET,

send an e-mail message with "info" in the body to:

info@www.gao.gov

or visit GAO’s World Wide Web Home Page at:

http://www.gao.gov

PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548-0001

Official Business

Penalty for Private Use $300

Address Correction Requested

Bulk Rate

Postage & Fees Paid

GAO

Permit No. G100