Summary: Despite some progress in reducing its infrastructure, NASA faces formidable challenges to successfully reaching its budget goals through fiscal year 2000. Ultimately, if NASA cannot find enough infrastructure cost reductions to meet these goals, the agency will likely have to once again adjust its programs--stretching out, reducing the scope, terminating current efforts, and postponing new initiatives. Even with NASA management's commitment to meeting goals without making such changes, the environment confronting the agency will not allow it to readily overcome the many obstacles it faces. GAO believes that NASA should submit a plan to Congress on how it will meet the fiscal year 2000 infrastructure targets. On the basis of that plan and any further progress by NASA, Congress could consider establishing an independent process to facilitate closure and consolidation of NASA facilities. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: NASA Facilities: Challenges to Achieving Reductions and Efficiencies, by Thomas J. Schulz, Associate Director for Defense Acquisitions Issues, before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. GAO/T-NSIAD-96-238, Sept. 11 (six pages).
