NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman speaks to employees at the Ames Research Center as part of his visits to all the agency’s field centers. Credit: X @NASAAdmin
WASHINGTON — More than two dozen major NASA projects say they have been affected by the loss of a fifth of NASA’s civil servant workforce in the last year, raising concerns about delays and cost increases.
The Government Accountability Office, in a July 23 report assessing NASA’s major projects in development, said that 25 of the 36 projects included in its study reported feeling effects from last year’s departure of 22% of the agency’s civil servants through deferred retirement programs.
“The civil servant departures have left NASA’s workforce out of balance with NASA’s programmatic needs,” the GAO stated in its report.
The report included several examples of science and exploration projects dealing with the loss of personnel. Orion, for example, lost 10% of its civil servants, and officials said they faced “challenges in filling several key positions,” although other agency officials said they took steps to mitigate those concerns. The Space Launch System program lost nearly 20% of its civil servant workforce, and the program is now considering adding workforce as a formal risk to the program.
