Letter from NASA Administrator Dan Goldin: Realignment of the NASA Headquarters Organizational Structure
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Office of the Administrator
Washington DC 20546
A
July 10 2001
TO: Officials in Charge of Headquarters Offices
FROM: A/Administrator
SUBJECT: Realignment of the NASA Headquarters Organizational Structure
Office of Management and budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. in his May 8, 2001 Bulletin, provided instructions for responding to the President’s initiative for agencies to restructure their workforces to streamline organizations. Using this guide, we have assessed the Headquarters structure and decided our course. We will realign Headquarters functions to answer the Administration’s challenge to compress the supervisory hierarchy and redistribute those resources to front line positions, to strengthen management oversight and to improve the coordination of our efforts and activities. We believe these actions will support the President’s initiative.
We will begin the realignment of NASA Headquarters by assigning reporting configurations to improve the coordination of activities, communications, consultation and decision making. Direct interaction between me and the officials in charge shall continue, but will now include a principal senior official whose direct management oversight will strengthen and add value to these exchanges and the decisions that flow from them. The Enterprises (and through them, their respective Centers), Codes AE, AM, AS, and Code Q will report to me through the Associate Deputy Administrator. Codes B, G, I, L, and P will report to me through the Chief of Staff. Finally Codes AO, C, E, F, H, J,K and X will report to me through the new position of Associate Deputy Administrator for Institutions, Chris Christensen has agreed to fill this critical agency position in addition to maintaining his leadership role in Headquarters Operations.
There are three other key features to the Headquarters realignment. This initiative will redistribute Code Z functions to other offices at Headquarters. At the same time, we will determine which leadership assignments should be redistributed to positions that directly serve internal and external customers and stakeholder, and act on those decisions. A third element of the realignment has already begun. We have identified executives whose careers will be refreshed by new assignments within Headquarters or at the Centers, and we have discussed the redistribution plans with them.
I have asked Dan Mulville, Courtney Stadd and Chris Christensen to define the actions necessary to ensure the success of these changes. They shall guide the measures I have approved to strengthen the decision-making process at Headquarters, to enhance effective performance and accountability, and to realign the organization. Dan, Courtney and Chris will work with you to define the optimal strategies, options, groundrules and timelines for implementing these actions.
The realignment of Headquarters functions and concomitant actions to implement changes to the organization require your executive leadership, innovation and enthusiastic support and commitment, to ensure complete success. I look forward to steady progress in this endeavor.
Daniel S. Goldin
