Summary

NASA established a chief information officer position in 1995, before enactment of the Information Technology Management Reform Act, which requires all federal agencies to appoint chief information officers. Chief information officers are to provide advice and assistance to senior management and program officials on acquisition and management of information resources. They are also responsible for establishing procedures to improve planning and control of agency investments in information technology. This report (1) reviews NASA's approach to establishing its chief information officer position, (2) evaluates chief information officer initiatives to date to improve information resources management, and (3) identifies opportunities for NASA to strengthen its chief information officer position and improve its information resources management program.

GAO found that: (1) NASA CIO has taken some action to address longstanding IRM problems including the lack of strong leadership, authority, and oversight, fragmented and overlapping responsibilities, redundant operations, unintegrated planning and budgeting processes, multiple communications networks, and poorly managed systems development efforts; (2) although NASA recognizes the need to address these IRM problems, it has been reluctant to limit the authority of its field centers and program offices to make independent decisions on how best to use information technology (IT) to carry out their missions; (3) despite these limitations, NASA CIO is instituting software and hardware standards to achieve interoperability among administrative systems, integrating IRM planning and budgeting processes, and revising IRM policies to reflect organizational changes; (4) strengthening the CIO position would enable NASA to achieve efficiencies and savings among mission-related systems; (5) agencywide investments in mission-related systems and related contractor services constitute as much as 91 percent of the annual NASA IRM budget; (6) funding for IT investments cannot be accurately consolidated given the nonstandard funding categories that various program offices use; and (7) instituting an effective IT resource tracking system is essential to ensuring the effectiveness of IT investments.