Summary: By the end of fiscal year 1996, NASA will be about halfway to its goal of reducing its workforce from 25,000 full-time-equivalent employees to about 17,500. NASA's success is due mainly to the use of buyouts to encourage employees to voluntarily resign or retire from the government. About two-thirds of the 4,000 people who left NASA in 1994 and 1995 took buyouts. Voluntary attrition should meet NASA's downsizing goals through fiscal year 1998, but the agency doubts whether attrition would provide sufficient personnel losses by fiscal year 1999. Thus, NASA intends to start planning for a reduction-in-force during fiscal year 1998 if not enough NASA employees are retiring or resigning voluntarily. NASA's ability to reach its goal of 17,500 employees 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 managing the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. Because of questions about NASA's ability to achieve major personnel reductions to meet likely future budgets, Congress may want to consider requiring NASA to submit a workforce-restructuring plan for achieving its fiscal year 2000 goal.
