Thursday, August 13, 2009

Space Jesuits

NASA OIG on Wheeling Jesuit University

Final Memorandum on Review of Wheeling Jesuit University Cost Proposals

"We found that NASA inappropriately approved, obligated, and partially expended more than $4 million of facility and administrative (F&A) costs because NASA grant officers in charge of the WJU agreements did not adequately review WJU's cost proposals. Specifically, the grant officers failed to note that WJU had included F&A costs as direct costs in its cost proposals to NASA. During our interviews with NASA grant officers assigned to review the WJU agreements, they stated that they were not sufficiently familiar with the definitions and allocation of direct and F&A costs to adequately exercise due diligence to ensure proposal costs were allowable, allocable, and reasonable under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-21, "Cost Principles for Educational Institutions" (Revised August 8, 2000) (Circular A-21).

Link (here)

1 comment:

TonyD said...

I don't even know how I feel about this kind of thing....I've had friends who were Government contracting officials. They got thousands of pages of paper to review and approve/disapprove - quickly. Their job is completely impossible - no matter how upright or moral the person.

Perhaps poor judgment is intrinsic to human endeavors? The private companies I worked for were just as bad - but they had massive profit to hide the poor judgment.