According to a recent article in CFO Magazine, NASA has some serious issues accurately accounting for its expenditures over recent years, having made $565 billion in adjustments. Its auditor basically gave up on the audit. The article says,

“PricewaterhouseCoopers, the agency’s auditor, issued a disclaimed opinion on NASA’s 2003 financial statements. PwC complained that NASA couldn’t adequately document more than $565 billion — billion — in year-end adjustments to the financial-statement accounts, which NASA delivered to the auditors two months late. Because of “the lack of a sufficient audit trail to support that its financial statements are presented fairly,” concluded the auditors, “it was not possible to complete further audit procedures on NASA’s September 30, 2003, financial statements within the reporting deadline established by [the Office of Management and Budget].”

The PwC audit is actually available on the NASA IG website.

A Reuter’s story carried the following, “Shyam Sundar, a professor in accounting with Yale School of Management, described the event as ‘a big mess,’ after seeing the auditor’s report. ‘If NASA would have been a public company, the management would have been fired by now,’ he said.”

However, management of a public company would also include the company’s board of directors, who in this analogy would include congressional oversight committees. And in the CFO Magazine article a member of the staff of House Science Committee observed of the financial situation, “I think there’s a little numbness to it. It’s really hard to get congressmen fired up about a bad audit.”

The audit is likely a symptom some deeper cultural and institutional issues in NASA and, if space policy matters, then these issues are certainly worth getting fired up about.