NASA’s bold missions on Earth and beyond require critical support services, including information technology, financial resources, human resources, legal services, and infrastructure management. In 2017, the Agency launched its Mission Support Future Architecture Program (MAP) to streamline and centralize these essential business functions. Today, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an audit assessing the MAP initiative and its implementation.
Over the past decade, the cost of mission support services has increased due to program demands. However, the budget for these services as a percentage of NASA’s overall funding has decreased. The Agency established MAP to ensure it could continue to meet current and future mission needs despite these constraints. The primary objective was to create a NASA-wide operating model that increased efficiency by creating shared standards and capabilities across the Agency’s 10 centers. Prior to MAP, mission support services were funded and managed individually through each center, which created duplicative efforts and business offices.
Although MAP was initially designed to end in 2023, the Agency declared it was complete 2 years early in 2021. However, in the new report, OIG auditors determined that some mission support organizations still have not fully implemented MAP. Several factors have hindered the process, including leadership turnover, insufficient resources, and an overly burdensome process not intended or designed for organizational change. The Agency also lacks comprehensive metrics to assess the initiative’s overall impact and success.
While MAP has enabled a more strategic view of NASA operations, additional steps remain to fully implement the intended enterprise-wide service model. The OIG made two recommendations to help the Agency’s efforts to streamline mission support services.
