NASA NEEDS ASSESSMENT

The process that requires improvement for quality performance at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the high-level decision-making process that involves program goal setting-prioritizing program goals-funding-operational decision-making. The high-level decision-making process at NASA is designed to produce failures, as opposed to being designed to produce successes.

NASA is an organization that owes its beginning to a political crisis in the United States. Early Soviet space successes further fueled Cold War fears among the American population; fears that were maintained at high levels by American politicians at the best of times during the Cold War era.

The success of the Soviet Sputnik program caused the American government to rush head-long and ill-prepared into a "me too" effort that resulted in both embarrassing failures and splashy successes. NASA was created to provide cohesiveness to the American space program that in turn, was intended to restore American confidence and salve a wounded national pride.

President John F. Kennedy, who campaigned in part based on a false claim of a "missile-gap" that placed the United States at a dangerous disadvantage in relation to the Soviet Union, was compelled to do something in this area after his election,

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cutive and legislative branches of government, many of the proposed programs likely would be shelved. Today, NASA has reached a stage of organizational development where organizational preservation and growth are as important, if not more important, than program performance. NASA's funding process and the absence of strong executive and legislative guidance for the organization cause it to be similar in some respects to such organizations as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and to be quite different from such organizations as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Each of these three organizations receives funding based on promises and claims made to the executive and legislative branches of government. Many of the CIA's failures are every bit as monumental as many of the failures experienced by NASA. While the CIA's guidance is as ill-defined as that for NASA, the reasons are different. In the case of NASA, the presidential administrations would like to generate a lot of public support by taking credit for NASA successes, without spending much money (relatively speaking). Thus, the presidential administrations shift the authority and the responsibility to NASA, so that, while they will be in a position to take credit,
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Approximate Word count = 1450
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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