NASA's internal watchdog said Wednesday it is auditing the agency's handling of a survey on air safety that NASA shut down after it had spent $11.3 million and then withheld the results.
The inspector general's office is looking into management of the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, a multiyear project that surveyed 24,000 commercial air pilots and 5,000 general aviation pilots on safety-related issues they encountered in flight and on the runways.
"The audit will initially focus on the history and status of NAOMS, including its objectives, funding, and plans for future use of the data," said Renee Juhans, executive officer for the inspector general.
She said the office began the audit Friday, with plans to interview contractors and staff involved in the survey.
The inspector general's audit staff examines the efficiency and effectiveness of NASA programs and contractor activities.
In its first public comment on the matter, the contractor that conducted the survey for NASA, Battelle Memorial Institute, on Wednesday said its work had been "very high quality."
The probe follows an investigation by Congress into the program, which surveyed randomly selected pilots by telephone.
The House Science and Technology Committee grilled NASA's administrator at a hearing last week. That came after The Associated Press revealed that NASA was withholding results of the survey on grounds it could undermine public confidence in the airlines and hurt airline profits, as well as breach confidentiality of pilots who were interviewed anonymously.
NASA's administrator, Michael Griffin, told Congress that he did not agree with the way his subordinates characterized NASA's rationale for rejecting AP's request under the Freedom of Information Act. He said he regretted the impression that NASA was trying to put commercial interests ahead of public safety.
Rep. Bart Gordon, the committee chairman, welcomed news of the audit.
"In our hearing last week, several members raised concerns about whether NASA had wasted almost $12 million for the NAOMS project by cutting off the funding before any serious analysis of the safety data was done. This is the type of audit an agency inspector general should be doing," Gordon, D-Tenn., said in a statement.
A NASA spokesman, David Mould, said the agency would cooperate with the auditors.
The internal audit appears designed in part to clear up conflicting information that has emerged about the purpose and outcome of the unprecedented survey.
Griffin told Congress that it was intended to test a survey method. But slide presentations that were used to brief other government agencies before the interviews ended in 2004 indicated it was to develop a permanent survey that would track air safety trends and help improve safety.
Experts who helped develop the survey also said it would not make sense to interview thousands of pilots just to test the method, and that type of testing was done at the outset by interviewing fewer than 700 pilots.
Griffin told lawmakers that NASA did not manage the project well and questioned the validity of the findings.
Battelle spokesman Katy Delaney said Wednesday, however, that the contractor stands by its work.
"We believe this work was done to a very high quality with very high quality results," she said.
According to information reported by the AP, the survey showed several types of safety incidents, such as runway incursions, occurring at a much higher rate than other government monitoring systems show.
Griffin directed his agency to review the matter and release any information that does not include confidential commercial information or compromise the anonymity that participating pilots were promised. The survey did not include any airline names or pilot identities.
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