After months of criticism of NASA’s management culture
following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the Office
of Personnel Management has praised NASA for its strategic
management of human capital.
NASA has aggressively completed milestones through
implementing its human capital plan since 2002, and the
same management team that developed the plan has updated it
to continue to ensure effective management and support the
agency’s vision, mission and goals. While updating its
organizational structures and planning and deploying its
workforce, it rightly prioritized service and cost, and
through the integration of competitive sourcing and e-Gov
solutions it has readied itself for continued change,
according to OPM.
It said in order to maintain and stock a leadership talent
pool NASA has put succession strategies in place and has
developed a work culture oriented toward performance,
partly by establishing performance appraisal plans for all
SES and managers and over 60 percent of all employees.
NASA measures outcome when making personnel decisions and
has integrated competitive sourcing into its efforts to
close gaps in minority representation and skill gaps as
well, said OPM.
