. . .

>> who are those contractors? >> one is for the sgss project. that would be general dynamics

so that project is being looked at and the performance has been a longstanding issue on that. the other one was the rbi instrument which is a weather satellite sensor. that one was proposed for termination. that was harris corporation and form formally excelus and they have to really investigate the situation. >> okay. thank you. miss martin, in your testimony you made a couple of really good suggestion, i thought, to try to avoid the too big to fail syndrome. what are some other ways we can hold contractors accountable? we have the watch list and what are some other things that we can do to keep projects on time and on budget? >> one limit what you're doing here today is an oversight hearing and the proposed hearing several weeks from now to focus on the issue specific to jwst. i think aggressive oversight by gao and the ig's office is important and the general sense

that folks need to be held accountable for this human failure and we all fail and there are human mistakes in the projects such as improper use of the solvent on the jwst by north run grumman by boeing is the prime contractor and we have individual, avoidable mistakes and we have issues with our international partnerships which are key to the future of nasa, but when the european service module is 14 months behind schedule that impacts orion. >> final question for you and also, i think, for miss chaplain and it is this, and it is very unlikely that nasa's budget is going to see a significant increase, say 25% any time soon and it's just not the nature of our spending and various constraints will prohibit, i think, anyone from getting a significant increase and nasa

has a flat line budget and other agencies have been cut. yet there are a lot of people and pundits who expect us to keep the international space station as is, goack to them and then on to mars and seem to be able to think that we will do everything all the time. i think that, in my opinion, is not being blamed to make decisions. realistically, it's not possible and we cannot do everything all of the time. is there some magic solution that will enable us to do everything all of the time or are we going to take a hard look at some of these big missions like ones we already have like the space station or others to come like the moon and mars? >> no. you're not missing. i think it's all about choices. there's a finite amount of resources and you're right, nasa has been fortunate in the

budgets it's received over the years and that's why cost and schedule estimation is so important to come up with realistic, cost and schedule so you can put it before the decisionmakers at nasa and in congress. had nasa been able to say that the james web space telescope would cost $8 billion ten years ago when it was proposed then it's a decision and you do james web and i'm not suggesting it should or shouldn't have been done and tol do things when it's up there, and if you say yes to james webb, you are saying no to a lot of other things. >> rights. that's what we have to appreciate, recognize and understand. my time is up, but miss chaplain, can you give us a really brief response to that, as well? >> i think nasa is at risk of having too many programs to pay for at one time. over the years we started out with 15 to 16 projects. that helped them reduce cost overall. now we're looking at 26. >> okay. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman.

>> great questions. >> thank you. now i recognize the gentle lady from texas. miss johnson? >> thank you very much. >> miss chaplain, your 2017 of nasa's major projects you indicated that in october 2015, nasa started to decentralized its independent assessment function and deploy the staff to the agency centers in part that meet program needs and areas such as program management and cost estimating. >> gao had previously reported on the potential risk that this change could pose for project oversight, but stated that it was too early and to try to teach them to assess its effort on agencies such as independence, the robustness of the reviews and information

sharing. so now one year later are you able to tell us whether the decent ralization was successful? >> we haven't seen a real visible impact either way yet. we are still very concerned about that move. i think it's beneficial to the agency to have centralized expertise in those areas. they really can leverage each other a lot. >> do you have any comment? >> yeah. i think we've moved to a model where we're putting the responsibility and the accountability of the mission director to manage the programs to do the independent assessment and so far they've stepped up to the job, and i think they're doing an effective job in the space by project management processes, including reyou haves. we still do have a cadre of experts in the office of the chief financial officer that have schedule and cost assessment expertise that the review boards can draw on, and

we've also given stewardship of project planning control to the office of the chief financial officer and that's been very beneficial in not only this cadre of people estimating costs and improving our skills and processes and capabilities in cost and schedule estimating in management. >> okay. let me ask you this. what are one of the most important things that nasa can do to minimize cost and scheduled growth and when nasa is met, what are the tradeoffs nasa can make and give me some examples of successful tradeoffs. >> yeah. so i think we continue to mature and effectively apply the joint confidence level process is going to be really important, and i've seen since 2009 i've seen the value of that and

budgeting at the 70% confidence level and i think we can do even better there in maturing the process. we continue to focus development of the project management workforce and the control workforce has been noted including hiring and developing the talent through hands-on project experience and training. about 15 years ago we identified a shortage of skills in project planning and control and we've really taken on an effort to hire and train people on that area, cost estimating and schedule estimating management. that's paid off and we need to continue to do that. we talked about independent assessments and we can continue to strengthen independent assessments and we have a capturing in communicating lessons learned and looking for systemic issues and challenges across programs and putting

corrective action plans to deal with those like the shortage of control staff. we need to continue to do that, and i think all of those things can lead to improved program project performance. >> thank you very much. my time's about up, but any other witness would like to comment on any of the questions? >> i would just add to a couple of things to his list. we see programs reluctant to do that and focusing more on quality management because these workmanship issues come up all of the time and there have been efforts to focus on that, but i think more can be done. >> congressman, i would like to add also there is a need to recognize that you need appropriate skills for the portion of the program life cycle you are in. so development skims are needed up front in a development program, operational skills at the end and we need to make sure

that we're working for the right skills at the right time. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> yes, ma'am. thank you. >> i would like to recognize the gentleman from oklahoma now, mr. lucas. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thinking of the questions that my colleagues have had. let's discuss for a moment in january 2018 gao founded the commercial crew program contractors boeing and spacex experienced additional scheduled delays for their demonstration missions and their certification of the vehicle for human space flight and these delays can jeopardize the ability to access to the interspace station. >> will there be a gap to the international space station? >> no, from will not be a gap. we've taken actions and we have other actions we can take so the first action we have taken is to bow three more seats on soyuz. and that extends the ability to

access that capablity and minimizes the risk of any gap between soyuz, contracting seats ending and commercial crew coming online. there are a couple of things we're looking at and one is adding a third crew member, and that will be important. the other is extensioning missions from approximately 140 days to 190 days and to be able to space the launches, the soyuz launches out and that can further mitigate any risk of a gap. >> would you account in the direction that the contractors are going that we won't have to use those measures? >> we -- this summer we're engaging in an assessment of the schedules for both spacex and boeing and we'll have a better handle on whether we need to take additional measures at the end of this summer and we'd be glad to report back on that. >> fair enough. that answers my question. yield back. >> thank you. i would like to recognize the

gentleman from virginia, mr. bier. thank you all for being here. miss kaplan, you mentioned that head be helpful for frequent time lines and they come sporadically. in the family business we update the projections at least once a month. here in the federal government we are getting all kinds of monthly reports on new home sales and unemployment claims and new jobs created. what's -- why are nasa or why are the contractors reluctant to update on a regular basis when it would be a lot easier to tolerate? >> it would be easier for them if they continually did it because then it wouldn't be such a chore to do it after a couple of years, but right now they said the baselines when they really start their program and they don't revisit. in some cases they don't want to revisit and they don't want to show to the world what the cost

truly is at that point, but you would have to ask the programs. i think it's a healthy thing to do, and you see conditions change in the james webb program. there were a lot of things that had changed in a few years. the cryocooler, for example, took way longer to manufacture than anticipated and that would have been a good time to reassess their projects and they didn't do it. >> one of the things as we move forward is looking at requiring much more frequent updates. >> it may be more of a rhetorical, editorial comment, but you write, the current budgeting process including the regular use of continued resolution and late-year appropriations and threats of government shutdown result in endless multiple planning scenarios and hold schedules and predicting accurate flight dates and it's difficult when the budget is constantly in flux. is it credible to say that congress plays a role in the problems that nasa has with

budget and time line? >> yes, sir, i would say that. you don't need to say any more. >> thank you for making that so clear. >> why not over -- over promise and underperform. i know that's what my children do with me. >> yeah. so, you know, our job on any given program area is to optimize the portfolio and deliver the most science or expiration missions that we can for the budget given. so we have, you know, taken an approach of having a portfolio of small, medium and large missions and an approach where we budget these missions at the 70% confidence level. we think that balances the risk of projects in formulation and implementation against the opportunity costs of budgeting more than that at the 70 cent

confidence level and starting new missions. so it's a meat of optimizing the portfolios and delivering the most science and expiration content that we have for the content given. >> i would suggest that part of optimizing that is managing the expectations of the people you have to -- we can definitely do a better job of managing expectations. >> mr. martin? >> i think one of the things is you underpromise and you're in greater danger of not getting it started of attracting the signing and attention to get the funding promised. >> they overpromised the maturity of the technology. having struck like a lawyer going like a footnote on page 3, there is a quote from former administrator griffin and he was talking about projects, proponents of individual

missions downplay the particular nickal difficulty and risk, grossly at times in order to gain new start finds. i think that's been a historic problem for nasa. >> you raised a couple of piece, one is the culture of optimism and sometimes too optimist being. with the level of accountability we have a shortage of the talent that we need. more than half, over 50 years old and the proud challenge. how do you ratchet up accountability and not depress the enthusiasm and the sense of worth, and also, how do you dampen the optimism in an agency that has to be so optimistic? >> it's incredibly difficult and you're dancing on the edge of a knife, because as you point out, you have to have the optimism and free thinking to really think of things that have never been built before, to conceptualize them and stop

putting metal on them. it's an incredibly different balance. if it was easy, nasa would be doing it. it is rocket science, after all and it is very difficult. nasa has brought in techniques and jcls and other processes, and they just need to force adherence to those requirements. >> thank you. mr. chair, i yield back. >> yes, sir. thank you. now i would like to recognize the gentleman from alabama, mr. brooks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i am concerned about the perceived transition process away from the current operational format of the international space station, there has not been in my judgment, enough substantive debate on what this transition involves. with that as a backdrop, i have a question directed at miss chaplain and the director contracting the national

securitiag security acquisitions, gao and first, has nasa come up with the definition of what commercialization of the international space station means? >> we have not been doing work in that area and i don't believe they have yet, but i'll let steve. >> so let me tell you where we are with i would say the more detailed planning of station transition. so we released a solicitation not too long ago for studies, industry studies on transitioning space station to some sort of collaborative or commercial enterprise. we are getting proposals back in this week and we'll evaluate those and what we asked for in those studies is the commercial that they think they can provide us as opposed to what we need and the second is their technical approach to achieving their capabilities and third is what is the business plan?

although we don't have a rigorous definition, shassa should be 20%, 30% user capability and other government entities and commercial entities should also use that capability. we should not be the 80% or 90%. to me, personally, the need would not dedine fine it as commercial. so we'll get those studies back in december and that would inform a more detailed transition plan and we'll be ready to come to you all and get your feedback and input on it. when do yuan anticipate having the more detailed plan that you can present to us that we have a better understanding of what this commercialization means? >> we'll get the results of the studies in december of this year and we'll need some number of months. probably the first half of next calendar year we'll definitely be able to come back and lay that out informed by the studies that industry inputted and what looks feesible in the mid-20s

timeframe. >> so you would be in a position to answer the question in the first six months of 2019, is that my understanding? is that is correct? >> i can get back to you on a more exact date, if you like. >> thank you. mr. martin, your audit of commercial resupply services to the international space station report 2018 ♪s that, quote, spacex's average pricing per kilogram will increase approximately 50% under crs-2 while orbital adk's average per-kilogram pricing will increase by roughly 15%, end quote. the major difference between those contracts is spacex's introduction of reusablity. as spacex has noted multiple times that customers should not expect discounted on re-used hardware. my question is this, are you concerned whether taxpayers will save money with reusable rockets

and second, follow-up question is it possible it may end up costing nasa and the united states taxpayer more overall? >>. >> steve can probably answer this and there is 3% to 7%, and i think it's been once if not twice so far for the use of cargo so there is a slight reduction. my concern is it's a safety issue and so the launch services people need to assess the specific rocket and they have access to the rockets before they authorize it for launch. >> well, mr. jersick, since mr. martin pointed the finger at you with your insight, can prou provi you provide any insight you may have to that? >> with the introduction of the reusablity of the first stage of the falcon 9 and they're also

working to re-using the faring and they're looking at an approach to reuse the upper stage also. >> as they gain experience and as anyone gains experience operationally with the system, i think there is an opportunity to furthy reduce the risk and reduce the cost and how much effort it takes to recondition it to refly it. there is an opportunity there and i am not able to predict what additional savings they might achieve at this point. >> is there any chance you can expand on an increased risk factor of using a novel approach, i.e., reusable rockets. >> we're in the process of assessing that risk for our migs and i can take a question for the record on that to get back to you on when that assessment will be done. >> please. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i recognize the gentleman from

pennsylvania, mr. lamb. >> thank you, mr. chairman. everyone, i appreciate you highlighting the difficult position that you're in when it comes to unpredictable funding streams and threats to shut down the government and that kind of thing. i'm trying to learn a little bit more about how that affects you on the ground day to day. this say question for anyone. can you share more specific examples about how that might have affected a particular project? >> i'll be happy to take that because i lived it for a while and what happens, congressman, is when you're working on a program and you're trying to put the plan for the future and what's my work plan for the budget horizon and as i'm work other for the appropriations budgeting process, every time i have to plan to a different

number that means i have to go back to the planning iteration process. so at a time when the president's budget request was significantly different from what was typically coming from the appropriations process, it was necessary to, a, to do the plan that was supportive and was inclusive in the president's budget request, and i had to be ready as a program manager if additional appropriations came back in i had the ability to plan and to be able to react to that. >> what type of program were you managing? >> at the time i was doing this, this is the beginning of the sls and orion programs. >> that was a program that was supposed to take how long kind of from start to finish? >> at the time i was there we were looking at first launch in the 2017, 2018 timeframe, and during my tenure as the program director for sls and orion, we

had to deal with a government shutdown. continual negotiations on both ends of pennsylvania avenue, and then -- and then in addition to that while i'm doing all of that planning, the team's focus is pulled away from the day to day management of these technically complex jobs. so we were working through all of that and actually had to deal with the government shutdown and the multiple planning cycles. >> miss chaplain, it seemed like you had something to add. >> i heard similar things from other agencies that i oversee like missile defense and that constant replanning and the chaos and the time that it consumes, but another real example of the impact of a shutdown can have is the cryotest at the end of the program like james web, it might take a couple of weeks to get

the facility ready for the test and two weeks to cool down, and a shutdown while they were doing that test this time and i really worry. if we have to shut down we're going lose a whole month of time. >> okay, thank you very much. again, a question for anyone because i think it's pressing. some of you highlighted the workforce development issues that you have within nasa, and i think it was mr. dunnbacker who talked about young people especially leaving nasa for higher-paying jobs in the private sector which is a challenge in the government and it happens in the military, too. if there was one reform that you could suggest or one thing we can improve or strengthen to retain some of this talent and to attract new talent, what would it be? >> as i stated in my testimony, the one thing i would recommend is good, real, hardware programs to go address those technical

needs that we need for space exploration and for the nasa mission, but to go give these students and give these young professionals, real, hands-on hardware experience because that informs their capability and informs their experience throughout the career. >> i would like to second that, the first project i worked on after i got out of college was the space flight instrument development project at inhouse research center and i was able to design, build, integrate, test all of the way through environment test and flight hardware and that experience was critical throughout my entire career and the systems engineer project manager and the line manager. i would second that. i don't know how i would have been able to be as effective as i was to move through my career at nasa. >> i may give you a bit of a story, too, if you stand back and look at there are a group of people of which i was one, robert lightfoot was one, where

we h we had the ability and asked by our mentor to chest shuttle main engines inhouse, and we tested the technology that ultimately became the final flight configuration, and that hands-on experience, our mentors and our leaders forced us into that because they knew it fit into the long-term career. >> just echoing the same thing and we heard from a number of project managers that we spoke with and their frustrations about the agency engineers are spending most of their time overseeing contract efforts and that's frustrating. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> yes, sir, thank you. i would like to recognize the gentleman from louisiana, mr. higgins. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the chairman sees the young americans here today is nasa interns and i hope you young men and women are paying attention to these budget discussions.

we are a nation that's $20 trillion in debt and should this body ever manage to produce a surplus and say $1 billion, it would require 20,000 years of a billion-dollar surplus to address a $20 trillion debt. so i'm prayerful that nasa has a spirit of doing more with less because not only are individual projects at risk, but certainly anyone can recognize that a $20 trillion debt puts the entire stability of all programs at risk at every government agency. i am very hopeful that you young americans are paying close attention to this conversation. mr. martin, i am concerned about the culture of optimism that you

referred to and the too big to fail attitude amongst project managers, but i understand their perception that their projects are too big to fail because in every case, a tremendous amount of american treasure has been invested in that project and therefore it's quite logical for the project managers to have the cavalier attitude of too big to fail. what can this committee do? what can congress do to ensure projects are developed and managed within their budget constraints and including, like your thoughts, sir, regarding accountability for our contractors within these projects? >> again, i think more frequent conversations with members of congress about the status of individual projects is important and more fidelity to the cost

estimating that nasa does rid now and the occasional example that projects large or small be terminated if they go too far over cost and schedule. in preparation for this hearing i think the last project they remember being canceled was something called gems. it was a telescope that was supposed to look for evidence of black holes and it was a smaller program from nasa speak that was capped at $105 million, and then part way through formulation they realized an independent cost assessment that it would be 20% to 30% over the $5 million dollar cap cancelled it and to it got people's attention. >> generally speaking, the contractors that are involved in cost overruns for nasa projects, large projects, these are for-profit companies, are they not? >> they are, sir. >> has that ever been addressed within the leadership at nasa

that, you know, most americans if we receive a bid from a contractor to perform a particular service we expect the service performed for the price that was bid and held accountable by law and there is a certain expectation of performance when you're given a bid and yet within the federal government and certainly within nasa's large projects, there seems to be an attitude of well, we're not really accountable for the actual bid that we're presented and we won't be forced to perform. >> okay. so yeah, the -- most -- a lot of the times we're building systems and things that was never built before and in that case we use a

reimbursement contract and we hold the contract accountable through a performance evaluation plan and they're tied to a fee, usually a ward fee and that is their profit. so if they do not perform and they should get a low score for the evaluation plan and receive much less profit or no profit depending on how we await the incentives in the plan and how they're scored. given the high-risk nature of what we do and very complex systems we take that approach and then we hold them accountable and on the ultimate price to pay for them if they don't perform is loss -- a complete loss of profit. >> gentlemen, thank you for your response, mr. chairman, my time has expired. if there is a second round i have a question for miss chaplain. >> yes, sir. thank you very much. now mr. foster?

>> thank you. i guess i would like just by making the observation about the amount of funding that you can think about having in the next decades. last week the federal reserve made the historic announcement that household net worth in the united states, the wealth of americans just went over $100 trillion. this is up $45 trillion since president obama signed the stimulus and reversed the collapse and triggers the economic growth that's going on today. so when people tell you there is not enough money to do this or that, the scale for that is one fraction of $100 trillion and might we think about using to travel to mars or whatever your dream is. i would also want to say that i resonated as a former projection manager and someone doing technical components for large federal projects and to retain

inhouse expertise and it is very, very difficult to manage a project if you've never done it yourself and when i had to manage a group doing a large number of integrated circuits and the circuits myself before i decided that now i could sit at the top and emit specifications for other engineers and this is crucial and we have to look very carefully when this rush to privatization runs the risk of losing the in-house expertise that will ultimately cost more money because you will have projects that are not managed as well as they could be. so we ought to be very cognizant of that as we kind of play this transition. when i think of cost overruns there are two, big, general classes and the first is enthusiast cost estimates and the project and the initial scoping is done by people who

are advocates for the project and you need to get adults in the room to pull back and say how does this compare to the actual cost? >> the other one is legitimate technical risk, and i would just like to say that i would hope that my colleagues in congress would be much more tolerant of technical risk. it is okay to take significant technical risk and if you assemble a group of experts who say success is not ensured and congress should be very understanding and tolerant, but much less tolerant when projects are approved and when everyone in the room knows the -- and i don't want to point fingers and i know in your mines several projects that have been improved where a large number of the people knew you weren't going to get the project done. it's not just nasa. this happens everywhere in the government and so i was just

wondering, are there ways that you can identify retrospectively the times when you had costs and are there sociological red flags that would allow you to say, okay, i am suspicious that this is not a real cost estimate? i can tell when i'm suspicious and there are grand statements made about the program and the achievements that it's going to get seem overly exaggerated and that's when you start wondering, are these estimates real? in the nasa, i trust the process that they have because they do review those estimates pretty carefully. they have standing review boards that look at them before they make their decisions. they could be estimating the kind of compare and i do believe that their processes now as

opposed to a few years ago are pretty vigorous in ensuring those estimates are complete. i would just add one thing you said about taking risks, you know, you need to still do that. i think there is a concern between nasa and other places in the government that were taking enough technical risks that were too afraid to do that. >> i concur. >> with respect to science missions, nass relies, tensively on the findings of the national resource council that identify specific project, and i think that's another check. >> they don't do cost estimates and they are given external estimates is my understanding? >> they don't do very good cost estimates, but they do cost estimates. >> that's where you need the expertise and judgement at that stage. >> and if i may, congressman, when i think back on my career in some of the places where i've seen the problem occur the most.

one key thing stands out and that is have the people doing the cost estimate be the ones that will be held accountable for the program's execution, and i have seen a couple of instances where the people making the initial estimate putting the plan together need to be moving to something else and they brought the new person in. i think if there is an air of accountability and they're ultimately accountable for that cost for executing to their cost estimate that starts to get the behavior where i think you want it soss yol it socialogically and who takes the responsibility in that model. i guess i'm out of time here. >> thank you. the chair recognizes -- excuse me, congressman dunn from florida. >> thank you very much, mr.

chairman. i'll jump right in here. the canadian space agency last month canceled its participation of the first project for budgetary reasons. in your assess am, what will the impact be to the technology development and the cost which results from csa's decision to pull out of w first? >> that decision was factored in to the project's replanning after the independent review of w first and it was factored into the plan they put forward from phase a to phase b. so they've been able to adjust scope and adjust the cost and schedule estimates to stay within the $3.2 billion and still without the canadian contribution. >> how does that affect the technology development? >> i don't think it significantly affects the technology development, and i think that the project has a good plan to early on develop pretty type hardware to reduce the risk of that element, as

well as other elements of high risk. >> how about mission itself? does the capability or mission goals change? >> no. the level 1 science goals do not change and they will reach the requirements of the mission as defined in our survey for astro physics. >> that's great news. >> it requires a life cycle cost estimate by may 22nd. that's behind us. when will that be submitted to congress? >> we'll get you that within the next couple of weeks and it's been done and they're drawing up a documentation and it will be here within the next two or so weeks. that's our plan. >> great. many people here on the panel call the assessment -- many assessments that you need stable, predictable funding and let's close our eyes for a minute and imagine that congress will provide multi-year funding

and it's a pleasant thing, and in that scenario how would this authority change your planning for your programs? >> well, i think it would allow us to only plan once and execute that plan with what mr. dunnbalker, and the replacement orbiter after the challenger accident where congress appropriated multi-iayear fundi for that project and they were successful in executing on-schedule and on-budget with a profile that ramped up and ramped down like any rational project plan should and having the money, the adequate money when they needed it. >> so that might actually be good for a lot of different agencies in the government? >> for any large, complex program that will take multiple years to execute, i would think so. >> i'm thinking miss chaplain

would like that, right? >> in our limited time, you may be under are under constraint and may not be able to answer this. >> what programatic changes would you make in light of that failure? can you answer that? >> i can tell you what we have done to date. >> okay. the first is a series of actions that we worked on with northrop grumman and be able to more clearly hold people accountable for getting through the immigration and test program. that also has allowed them to identify and resolve issues in a more timely manner to minimize the impact of those issues. we've also added staffing to the intt at northrop and we've -- we

really i would say strengthened the mission assurance to the quality issues that were mentioned by miss chaplain and others to try to avoid human errors that have caused schedule delays. like was mentioned a small error or problem was mentioned. >> in the 30 seconds remaining, do you have anything to add to his comments on that? >> we have not done significant oversight of jwst, congressman? how about you, miss chaplain? >> i think the actions taken have been reasonable and i would note that they have had on-site presence over in gas, but we'll be looking to see how effective those actions are as we do our next review. well, here's wishing the multiyear funding authority and with that i yield back.

the gentleman yields back and the chair recognizes mr. representative lofgren from california. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thinks is an important question and both questions have been asked, but i would like to think about what further congress could do in addition to avoiding the kind of situation mrs. lam addressed that shut down the issue and the inconsistency between the president's requested budget and what's appropriated that lends uncertainty to the planning process. what could congress do to limit the uncertainty in functions and the idea of a multi-year funding program for large projects is valuable, but can you give us further guidance to stem losses

through our own actions? i'll start. i would say avoid overspecifying what your expectations are and avoid setting dates for program. avoid choosing how they're going to do it because that limits their choices even more to what they can do. >> i would just echo that. we seem to be getting more and more direction with the appropriations process, particularly through the report and the expectation is we will follow that direction and that constrains the solution space and our ability to manage effectively sometimes. i would say just to echo what mess chaplain said, i think that's one additional thing i can think of. with respect to the funding issue, not only is the actual dollar amount. it's when the dollar amount comes and the proper nation of the appropriation has impacted nasa programs.

i would add, work to make sure that the environment in which we have these discussions is less punitive and more objective and more willing to hear the risks and understand the issues. i think we have to be careful that a lot of the -- we inadvertently set up a vicious cycle of oversight and it leads to more oversight and it just keeps going around in a circle and i think what congress can do and this subcommittee can do because of its oversight activities is to help establish an environment that allows more open communication on these kinds of issues. >> i think the point that mr. foster made and all scientists know which is failure is a learning experience. science is testing and not knowing the answer before you start and we need foster that sense of discovery and willingness to take risk if we're going to be successful.

let me just close with sort of a parochial question. i represent part of santa clara county and nasa is located in santa clara county and in thinking of the demographic issues we face in nasa with so much of the workforce being over 50 years of age the nasa aames facility is located in a key part of the country and there's synergy between what's going on and the tech community and nasa aames and although it's very expensive to live in santa clara, actually they just built housing for nasa employees so it's possible to maintain that synergy. i am just wondering in terms of -- that facility, as well as others that are co-located with technology centers. what further we can do to move

top scientists away from better paying jobs into the agency to make young people who are smart and who are good scientists want to work ins ina if anybody has an answer to that. >> i'll take a try at it. i think what the young people want now is similar to what the young people wanted when i got out of school. they want exciting work. they want to know that they have an opportunity to make a difference and they want to help solve today and future problems, and i think providing those and then in addition to the infrastructure options that you have described would be extremely beneficial. i think from my experience, teaching at purdue for a few years is if you hit those first three bullets then the students will come. that's why they go to spacex and

blue origin. they see exciting work and that's why they still want to come to nass because nasa still hires the cache that it always has. so exiting work, help make a difference and do something quick and i think you will be a long way down the road. >> thank you very much. i see my time's, piered, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you for your questions and participation. the chair next recognizes representative rohrabacher of california. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i apologize for being late to the hearing. obviously, two important hearings have to happen at exactly the same time which perhaps leaves me to the first complaint which is we need to make sure we hold nasa accountable, but i have to assume that the congress isn't doing its job all that well either. and we've been talking about continual resolutions and

omnibus bills and that's a reflection that we're not doing our jobs, as well. please don't think if there's criticism here coming from this end that we don't questions about this. let me ask you, is a lot of this intentional low bidding on the about these cost overruns and it seemed to be around. they've been around as long as i've been around. let me ask you this. are we -- is a lot of this intentional low bidding on the part of companies in order to achieve a contract? is this part of that? whoever can answer that question. >> you know, we have a pretty

rigorous for a proposal and proposal evaluation process, including independent cost and schedule estimates by the government to ensure what's being proposed is actually executable, what's being proposed by the contract is executeble. >> it's not say -- you don't see this as a scheme by some big corporation to intentionally bid low, get the contract and then realize we have to pay for it later on? >> i do not. >> okay. anybody else believe that at all. >> thank you. >> that helps our understanding of this. and a lot of these companies that do have the cost overruns, are companies that are worth billions and billions of dollars themselves. what penalty does a company have that goes through a cost overrun and doesn't meet its commitments to a contract? what's the punishment?

>> so, as we discussed earlier you can take actions to punish companies through awards and incentive fees but often they're tied to multiple objectives so you're limited in terms of what you can do. the ultimate thing is to cancel a program if you feel like -- >> what about the next program? can a company that did not meet its contract be denied the next contract or a contract down the road because they have not met their obligation. >> about a contractor watch list, they could go on that list if they're not performing well and nasa will not deal with them in the future for paerds of time. -- period of time. that is one option. i don't know if you want to comment. >> maybe you can expand on that. >> what we do now, first of all we have a very robust acquisition and integrity program in the august run by the office of procurement and

general council. they, along with the programs, look at contractor performance and we will use the far process for suspension and debarment for lack of performance or for wasted abuse. so we use the existing process. the other thing we do is we have the contractor assessment reporting system. when we evaluate a contractor on a regular basis that assessment goes into that system as well as the assessments of the departments and agencies in the federal government and then not only nasa but other departments can draw on that to use in assessing past performance of the contract and determine whether to award them anything in the future. >> well, it seems to me that we have to be much more diligent on -- in that area and if we have accountability and responsibility for these things, we can expect to have more problems. and we do not have the amount of discipline and the accountability that will deter companies.

perhaps maybe companies that make bids should be held responsible for that bid, meaning that the money that's lost, perhaps, should be absorbed by the company. as i say, these are multi-billion dollar companies. if they're going to be taking the taxpayer money and failing in what they're claiming to do, why should the taxpayer pick it up? we have -- with we mentioned a trillion -- we have $20 trillion debt. the gentleman mentioned how that is -- if there's anything that's going to keep us from going into space, it's going to be the total disintegration of our economic systems so we cannot afford any of this stuff. i would also -- let me just note, that we're also going to have to -- we have a $20 billion budget for nasa, $20 billion. we should be able to do a lot with $20 billion. let me just note when i first

got involved, i realized the budget wasn't enough on to accomplish the missions. i tried to focus totally on international cooperation and private sector investment. let's hope that we -- that that's one avenue of making more revenue come in, but we also have to make sure we pay attention to what this hearing is all about. it's making sure that we're managing the actual projects themselves in a way to minimize the loss of very scarce dollars. so thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> certainly. the chair thanks the jej phan for his participation. we're nearing the noon hour and we will finish by noon. there may be a member who wishes to ask a second set of questions as long as we're able to do so within that time frame. mr. higgins, did you want to do

follow up? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have one question. >> one second. the chair recognizes representative higgins for louisiana for the follow up. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for recognizing me and allowing me to ask one question to miss chaplin. nasa received multiple recommendations on ways to develop cost and schedule estimates as well as perform joint costs and schedule competence level analysis during the beginning stages of the implementation phase large projects. in december 2012, it was recommended that the jswt project update its jcl. according to the report nasa concurred with this recommendation and yet no steps were taken to implement. further analysis indicates that if implemented, an updated jcl may have prevented schedule delays among the many known and unknown challenges that nasa

encounters regarding schedule and continuity. can you elaborate on why this recommendation was purposefully overlooked? >> at the time they did concur as you said, so i didn't ever have an official reason it was overlooked. i think they just were reluctant to relook at their costs. a couple years later, we recommended they do something similar to do a cost schedule risk analysis and to really take a deep look at their risks and we're going to do that ourselves working with the contractor, but that was rejected by the contractor and then it wasn't until they were getting ready to work with the launch agency on setting the date they did a schedule risk analysis themselves and realized how far behind they really were. >> thank you for your candid answer. mr. chairman, thank you for

allowing me to ask the second question. >> certainly. any other member wish to ask any other followup questions? seeing none, i thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony and the members for their questions. the record will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and written questions from members. this hearing is adjourned.

the nation's highest court has six decisions to release this week before they end the session several may be released today, president trump's travel ban, racial gerrymandering claims in texas, public sector uns yon fees and laws at religious based crisis pregnancy centers. oral argument is available at cspan.org in the c-span video library.

president trump is headed to south carolina this afternoon to campaign for governor henry mcmaster, the head of tomorrow's primary in that state. we'll take you live to west columbia, south carolina, at 7:00 p.m. eastern to watch the president's event. several members of president trump's cabinet will be on capitol hill this week testifying before congress. tomorrow health and human services secretary alex azar will go before the finance committee on prescription drug prices and expected to be questioned on the separation of migrant children from their families along the u.s./mexico border. live coverage begins at 9:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span 3. wednesday, housing and urban development secretary ben carson testifies at an oversight hearing at the house financial services committee. live coverage starts at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3. wednesday afternoon, president trump's pick to head the veteran affairs department robert wilkie

will testify. live coverage starts at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span 3 and all of those hearings will be available on-line at cspan.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. >> this week on the communicators, fcc commissioner michael o'reilly on the elimination of net neutrality and the expected surge in corporate mergers after the at&t/time warner merger. mr. o'reilly is interviewed by telecommunications report senior editor paul kirby. >> the last administration under obama both chairman wheeler and the head of the anti-trust division felt that should not be changed, should not go to three. t-mobile and sprint did not try to merge. should there be more nationwide wireless carriers, are three okay? >> i do not have such a structure. i want to take with the application put before the commission before us and analyze that in terms of what's the data that's presented, what are the

circumstances in the marketplace, what are the qualifications and the capabilities of the current providers? what are the promises that they're providing and what are they -- the opportunities they may be able to bring to the american consumers. what is the debt load they're taking on. are they going to be able to meet the obligations they're talking about with us and the department of justice. i will look at the application as forthright as expected and don't have an artificial number in my head it should be this or that. there are benefits to having more and stronger providers. i want to see what the circumstance may be and i take the applications as they're presented to me. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. this week, the c-span bus traveled to juno, alaska, as part of our 50 capitals tour with helicopter over cable partners, gci. the bus continues the trip

across alaska by ferry to the city of haynes, ahead of our stop in fairbanks. be sure to join us july 21st and 22nd when we'll feature our visit to alaska. watch alaska weekend on c-span, c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app. >> public and private sector officials discuss cyber security priorities challenges at fed scoop and fire eye. this hour-long portion featured remarks from the arm's major general garret lee and the assistant for attorney general for national security john demmers. >> am i live? okay. i'm sure you had a lot from tom,