Workforce problems imperil NASA

Workforce, March, 2003 by Douglas P. Shuit

It's a workforce subject that has suddenly gotten deadly serious. Investigators seeking answers to the Columbia disaster say human resources issues may be at least partly to blame for the tragedy The disintegration of the space shuttle followed years of troubling studies raising the possibility that deep budget cuts, combined with an aging workforce, have compromised the safety of the NASA program.

In the aftermath of the fatal explosion, it is clear that the space agency is still reeling from a series of deep budget cuts that began in the late 1990s, say experts inside and outside the government. The tools of the downsizing are all too familiar to human resources executives. Use cash incentives to induce older employees to retire. Impose a hiring freeze. Scramble to make do with the workers who remain on the job.

"It all left us uneasy," says John G. Stewart, a 21year veteran of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. "They were pushing the people who remained [at the agency] too hard. They weren't bringing in new people. The people who were left were stressed tremendously." Stewart was one of the advisers forced off the panel in 2001 after raising safety concerns about the space shuttle program. NASA said at the time that it wanted new faces on the advisory panel.

While Stewart and others remain squeaky wheels, they are by no means alone. Just days before the Columbia disintegrated, the U.S. General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agency, renewed its worry about long-standing workforce problems that NASA advisers had first raised five years ago.

"NASA is facing shortages in its workforce, which could likely worsen as the workforce continues to age and the pipeline of talent shrinks," the GAO said in a January report. Personnel shortages are in the very areas critical to the shuttle program's success: engineering, science, and information technology "Like many agencies, NASA is facing substantial challenges in attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce," GAO investigators added. The examiners found that the agency had made strides since it discontinued its downsizing plans in 1999. Even so, the GAO analysts said, staffing shortages remain a problem.

Consider this: The average age of NASA's workforce now is over 45. Within the critical science and engineering workforce, the over-60 population outnumbers those under 30 by nearly 3 to 1, according to the GAO. Within five years, 25 percent of NASA's engineers and scientists will be eligible to retire.

"That's the way it is in a lot of federal agencies, but in a lot of federal agencies, people's lives are not on the line," Stewart told Workforce during a recent interview. He stops short of blaming the Columbia disaster on workforce issues. But he concedes that cutbacks certainly cast a cloud over the space shuttle program. "Clearly, the potential is there' Stewart says. "At some point a line is crossed when safety is compromised, but it is very hard to define where that line is." Still, he adds, "it was increasingly likely that safety would be compromised at some point."