Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Audit: NASA wastes millions in small-business funding

Two senators complained Wednesday that NASA is wasting more than $2 million a year in research funding targeted for small businesses, as revealed by the agency's inspector general.

The money from the Small Business Innovation Research program was supposed to stimulate technological innovation. Instead, auditors said the program paid out duplicative funding to the same vendors for projects.

"We can't afford to lose any of our precious research and development dollars to waste, fraud or abuse," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who is chairman of the committee that oversees NASA.

Inspector General Paul Martin found that 25 percent of NASA's awards in 2008 were improper payments for undocumented or ineligible expenses. The payments totaled $2.7 million that year.

"Consequently, some SBIR award recipients may have received multiple SBIR awards from different Federal agencies for the same research or NASA may have received highly questionable research products for its contract money," said the 78-page audit.

For example, NASA and the Small Business Administration have databases that identify 31 firms with 98 contracts worth $26.8 million for "lithium batteries" that are potentially duplicative.

But NASA’s chief technology officer, Robert Braun, disputed the report's conclusions for being based on a lack of paperwork rather than confirmed wasteful spending.

"NASA does not agree with findings on 'unallowable cost' and 'unsupported cost' as these conclusions were based on the lack of documentation rather than on evidence indicating that the actual determination did not take place," he wrote in reply to the audit.

—Bart Jansen, Washington

5 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gudgeon said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.