NSF Accused of Misuse of Funds In Giant Ecological Project 116
An anonymous reader writes: The National Science Foundation (NSF) and a contractor have been accused by both an audit and by Congress of a significant misuse of funds in a major ecological monitoring project costing almost a half a billion dollars. From the article: "With a construction budget of $433.7 million, NEON is planned to consist of 106 sites across the United States. Arrays of sensors at each site will monitor climate change and human impacts for 30 years, building an unprecedented continental-scale data set. Although some initially doubted its merits, the allure of big-data ecology eventually won over most scientists.
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
But a 2011 audit of the project's proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency, NEON's accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented.
When the NSF green-lit the project, the agency's inspector-general ordered the audit released on 24 November, which found unallowable expenses including a $25,000 winter holiday party, $11,000 to provide coffee for employees, $3,000 for board-of-directors dinners that included alcohol, $3,000 for t-shirts and other clothes, $83,000 for "business development" and $112,000 for lobbying."
Somewhat related (Score:1)
âoeIt is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.â -- Upton Sinclair.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Isn't that the ginger chick who kicks pwns a nazgul in LoTR?
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't say 2014 is the hottest year on record. It says a report claims it should be the hottest year on recent record if two and a half months end up being similar to previous months in the year and the report actually only claims it will be hotter than the average temp during two different periods of time and blames it on oceanic oscillations like el nino (otherwise known as natural causes).
Re: I'd like funding to research fairies... (Score:2)
You have the burden of proof backwards, my "pro-science" friend.
Re: (Score:2)
are utilizing it faster than it is being discovered/ created.
I just paid $2.38 this afternoon. Seems we have a bit of a glut.
Loss of context and common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
In a project worth half a billion, all the cited "unallowable" expenses are utterly and completely meaningless. Somebody has lost all perspective and all reason and is playing politics here.
Re: (Score:1)
Both of you are idiots [nsf.gov].
DCAA rendered an adverse opinion on NEON’s proposal since the audit disclosed significant questioned and unsupported costs of $154.4 million (nearly 36% of the proposed $433.7 million budget).
Re: (Score:2)
36% of the *proposed budget* which was audited before it went into effect.
The article does now say what percentage of expenditures to date is represented by these improper expenses.
Re: (Score:1)
Considering that they claim 1/2 billion are not allowable and the numbers cited only add up to 234k. I'd say that they are only disclosing 1/2 of the unallowable expenses. While I would be okay with everything they did (With the exception the lobbying, i can not think of an excuse for it in a data collection operation), most of these should have been reserved for after the project had been completed, or at least been reserved for major milestones.
I'm okay with them throwing a party, but 85k seems a bit exce
Re: (Score:3)
(With the exception the lobbying, i can not think of an excuse for it in a data collection operation)
You're not thinking very hard.
"Gee, Mr. Mayor, it's really a shame that particular legislation is going to disrupt our construction. That means even more delays bringing in those new jobs and that economic boost we've been working towards. You know, with just a few small changes, that law wouldn't affect us. When's a good time to talk about that? Booked all week, huh? How about Saturday? Over a game of golf and a nice dinner? Fantastic! Glad that will work out. I'll see you then..."
Re: (Score:1)
Regardless of the size of the project, it's not acceptable to spend $25K on a party.
Re: (Score:2)
Cocaine is expensive these days. For that matter, so is booze.
Also, 11K for coffee seems a bit low. No wonder they never got anything done.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Loss of context and common sense (Score:5, Informative)
My department gets $25 per head for a *quarterly* event, and we have about 1,000 people.
Re: (Score:1)
That depends on many factors.
Was it a party for 3 people and a hooker? Or was it a party for 500 people and semi nice venue? Which would be about 50 a head (not out of line having priced many of these sorts of things out myself).
Most of those costs seem in line with many of the expenses I have seen for my company. Also the summary does not include timeframes. 11k for coffee? For a group of say 200 people at 500 a month (not out of line) that could be over 2 years.
Look I am all about reducing waste. Bu
Re:Loss of context and common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, compared to the size of this project, these costs don't seem disproportional at all.
Let's say that salaries + equipment + overhead amounts to 100k per employee per year, and let's estimate that around 1/3rd of the budget, say $150m, was spent in the audit year. Then there'd be around 1500 employees. Thus we have a per-head cost of:
Winter holiday party: $17
Coffee: $7
Shirts and other clothes: $2
For a project of that scale, whatever business development covers, 83k is chump change and I wouldn't be surprised if the expenses are reasonable. $3k on board of directors dinners sounds abnormally *low*, so kudos to them for keeping the costs down. The only one that sounds off is lobbying - but then again, that's a tiny fraction of what a company that size would probably spend on lobbying, and I don't know what they classify as "lobbying".
Re: (Score:2)
And here we have the reason for our $17 trillion debt. "It's just $83k".
"It's Just..." is a ticket to financial ruin whether it's a $25k a year janitor or the fucking U.S.A.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody gets it. After all it's the government's money. The bad thing is that this goes on all through the government. Every agency, it's probably about 30 percent or more waste all the way around. You can't stop it either because everyone has a political axe to grind and rise up to protect their territory.
Re: (Score:2)
You're quite right. It's a guestimation. It's based on some knowledge however as it's almost routine to see government waste reported daily. It's so damn prevalent that no one cares anymore because everyone knows it goes on and almost no one ever gets in any real trouble over it. There used to be an award called the "golden fleece award" that was given out to agencies for wasting taxpayer's money. There were some that were questionable and one where they got it wrong but overall most of them were spot
Re: (Score:2)
It is helpful to have a sense of proportion. The biggest tickets in the budget are non-discretionary (grandma and grandpa are expensive, so are their children who are disabled), and defense. The former is roughly $2.4 Trillion, the latter is roughly $600 Billion and of that last, about $240 Billion is personnel costs. NSF's 2014 budget was roughly $7 billion, out of an approx $3.6 Trillion total budget. The main expenditure are direct transfer payments to...Americans.
Put quickly, your "observation" is bogus
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. Especially when so much money is at stake, employee morales have to be kept high.
Re: (Score:2)
a) Strawman. No one is arguing that the expenses should just get a pass.
b) The article says "there was no legal wrongdoing, DCAA director Anita Bales told the hearing".
c) The cited expenses, which the parent refers to, are all in the range of categorization error rather than corruption. However, the article say that "36% of NEON’s budget proposal was questionable or undocumented". The article was silent on how much of the budget spent to date was questionable or undocumented, or whether the problems w
Re: (Score:2)
a) Strawman. No one is arguing that the expenses should just get a pass.
b) The article says "there was no legal wrongdoing, DCAA director Anita Bales told the hearing".
c) The cited expenses, which the parent refers to, are all in the range of categorization error rather than corruption. However, the article say that "36% of NEON’s budget proposal was questionable or undocumented". The article was silent on how much of the budget spent to date was questionable or undocumented, or whether the problems with the budget proposal were very many instances similar to the cited expenses or larger unmentioned problems were needed to get to the 36%. SO the article fails to give insight on whether the proximate problem is sloppy budgeting or something more nefarious (though you can make the case that sufficiently advances incompetence is indistinguishable from malice).
My late father, an accountant, always said that if you lack controls, it's a virtual certainty that you'll have people stealing from you. The description of the chaos in their bookkeeping, in which a third of their expenditures were unallowable or couldn't even be determined by an audit, is just the sort of situation he was describing. It's also reasonable to think that if they were that sloppy/incompetent/crooked in one area, that other areas of the project were equally affected, like the engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
"It's also reasonable to think that if they were that sloppy/incompetent/crooked in one area, that other areas of the project were equally affected, like the engineering."
I am in agreement here. Orthogonal to the question of what motivated the problems in NEON's budget the quantity of problems is more than enough to make the whole thing a problem.
This is of course why the NSF' inspector-general orders audits in the first place.
Agreed, this is not news (Score:5, Insightful)
These are normal things a company would spend it's own money on. They shouldn't be charging it back to the government.
That said, I have to question why the /. editors think this is newsworthy. I suppose they want to keep stirring the Republican anti-science pot to generate page hits.
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, it is a clear violation of federal law to use ANY federal money to pay for alcoholic beverages. Likewise for lobbying. Some of the others may be, as well. The shirts are probably legal. Business expenses may or may not have been, depending on exactly what they cover, but are likely legal. Lots of things are "fuzzy".
IANAL or a procurement officer, but spent over 30 years dealing with federal procurement rules for contractors.
Re: (Score:3)
You can serve wine and beer at conferences as long as it is in reasonable (i.e. a drink or two per attendee), it's not against the law (just look at the White House Correspondents Dinner).
Personally, I don't expense alcohol, if I have a beer, I pay for it myself. Too many instances lately of click-hungry journalists looking for corruption, and they'll look back as far as they can go.
Re: (Score:2)
Back when I worked for a BIRN project center, it was made repeatedly obvious that alcoholic beverages purchases were banned with the funds. But they got around that by corporate sponsors donating the alcohol for free.
Re:Loss of context-common sense? = No! (Score:2)
Hey, this is how you motivate underworked, undermotivated, low wage government employees with 'perks.'
Re: (Score:2)
You've never done scientific work for the government.
These are not "meaningless" expenses, and this scale of project is not unusual, there is a real problem here. All of us who do this kind of work, from JSF contractors to small university professors, have to follow the same rules and be audited for the same things. It's understood that things like food and lobbying (!!) are not allowable expenses.
This doesn't necessarily show a lack of ethics, because a normal private contract may allow these things. Wh
Re: (Score:2)
What got me was the money for lobbying. WTF! Taxpayers paying for a government agency to lobby the government? WTF!!! Someone should be placed against a wall and shot.
Re: Loss of context and common sense (Score:2)
The size of the project is irrelevant. You are engaging in a logical fallacy. $100k is equal to $100k for projects of any size.
Republican business as usual... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the usual Republican FUD trying to kill something that might give us some actual numbers about climate change.
Among the bombshells:
- $11,000 for coffee for a $433 Million project... OMG!
- $3,000 for t-shirts... oh, the corruption! what is the world coming to???
Really... is this the best they can come up with???
After the hearing, DCAA director Bales said she was not impressed by the scale of the alleged misconduct. “In the contract world, we do a lot of reports that disallow this kind of thing. So, you know, people do it,” she said. “But then we identify it.”
Also significant was that the project managers were not invited to the hearing, thus insuring that this would be a true kangaroo court.
Re: (Score:2)
"there was no legal wrongdoing, DCAA director Anita Bales told the hearing."
Re: (Score:2)
All of which are illegal to charge to the NSF.
Which law would that violate?
I'm not saying it's *not* against the law, it very well may be. That's because Congress has a cost-plus mentality,
In the private sector the question would be what did we get for our money and could we have got it cheaper elsewhere? In the public sector Congress wants to know what you did with "their" money. Hey, you paid for coffee for people who worked overtime or attended a meeting? Well we could have saved money if you made them buy the coffee itself.
But the funny thing is t
Re:Republican business as usual... (Score:4, Interesting)
Our company pays for employee coffee. We have coffee machines in every breakroom with coffee and cream and sugar available. It has been found to increase productivity and reduce the number of coffee breaks that employees take. $11,000 for coffee seems awfully low, honestly.
Re: (Score:1)
Unfortunately, instead of rules that are intended to keep various reasonable expenditures like company provided coffee *in check*, we instead have a political process often dominated by folks that have no interest in productivity but instead have a ideological bent that makes it impossible for them to understand that things like coffee have been, by private organizations, determined have a positive ROI. In their mind, if you're paid by the government to do a specific task, ANY charge that is not that specif
Re:Republican business as usual... (Score:5, Interesting)
Really... is this the best they can come up with???
Wow, at least read the summary, quote:
[the auditor] DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON's budget proposal was questionable or undocumented
You somehow ignored the problem of 36% and somehow focused on $11,000. You should think long and hard about how that happened, because a cognitive bias like that can cause serious problems in the future.
One thing that can help is, when you see an article, if you agree with it, focus on trying to find problems with it. If you disagree with it, focus on things that might be true in the article. Taking the role of an adversary is a technique to help you see more clearly (and you really need help, and I'm saying that based on everything you missed in the summary).
Re:Republican business as usual... (Score:4, Informative)
The complete paragraph is:
"But a 2011 audit of the project’s proposed construction budget stalled three times when, according to the independent Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), NEON’s accounting proved so poor that the review could not be completed. Eventually, DCAA issued an adverse ruling, concluding that nearly 36% of NEON’s budget proposal was questionable or undocumented."
They had poor accounting. They have not been given a chance to explain or improve their accounting. This is a lot different than fraud. My cognitive bias is against the Republican climate deniers. If the worst thing they can come up with is coffee and t-shirts, this is just theater.
Re: (Score:3)
They had poor accounting. They have not been given a chance to explain or improve their accounting
If you have poor accounting on a $200 million budget...........
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Questionable or untraceable != wasteful.
But it is bad accounting.
Tracking spending is not easy (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Making sure that all the billing goes through correctly is not trivial.
No. But it has been done (successfully) by numerous entities in the past. Everything from suppliers who handle gov't, DoD and commercial contracts simultaneously to law offices who have to allocate billable hours to the proper clients, there are well established processes out there. And off the shelf accounting s/w.
Politics, plain and simple (Score:3)
Re:Politics, plain and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how this stacks up against waste in huge projects at Boeing or blackwater?
Misuse of funds != waste.
If you want to know how much of the funds at Boeing are misused, the answer is most likely $0, because any company in the government contractor business knows how to follow regulations precisely enough to avoid problems. It's all about following the rules, even if they don't make sense.
Apparently this company, NEON, is a noob at getting money from the government, and didn't follow the written rules correctly. That's why they're in trouble.
Question is, were they spending NSF money? (Score:5, Interesting)
Every University, business and organization that receives grants has overhead rates. These vary from reasonable to ridiculous based on the organization.
These overhead funds then typically go into a larger, not grant specific, fund that is fungible. The spending out of that fund is then restricted not by grant guidelines, but by the general rules of the institution. Usually that is still somewhat restricted at a University, for example, that usually won't allow alcohol. However, businesses receiving grants generally have fewer restrictions.
If you want to look at how overhead is used out of those general funds, I'm certain you will find this at any recipient organization. I am in fact surprised this is all they found. The fact that they are only looking at NSF and focusing on politically controversial topics for their specific party is very suspect. Should we start looking at how defense contractors spend all of their overhead for DARPA awards? Would they even share that information like NEON did?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
100% correct.
About being silly.
The difference between weather and climate is temporal, not spatial.
Nothing of value (Score:5, Insightful)
So, a Texas Republican who is a climate change and evolution skeptic that's been put in charge of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has a problem with an ecological project by the NSF. I'm shocked.
You might want to look at this Science article for a little clarification.
http://news.sciencemag.org/pol... [sciencemag.org]
Meanwhile, the defense budget...
Re: (Score:3)
Who are you talking to? Do you have some internal argument going on in your head?
We're talking about a guy, a congressman with actual power, who chairs the House Science & Technology Committee, who believes the earth is 6000 years old, that someone named "Adam & Eve" were the first humans (one of which was fashioned out of the other's spare rib). And who then flips out over an ecology project that costs less than 1/2 that of a
Re: (Score:2)
So your argument is that his bad behavior excuses anything you might do ?
I see you have been well and truly twisted.
Re: (Score:2)
No, my argument is "People who live in glass houses probably shouldn't be smearing their own feces all over the walls."
Re: (Score:2)
Actually in science you judge a statement by its ability to make falsifiable predictions about the universe. How well has climate science been doing ?
Sensors can't monitor climate change (Score:2)
Sensors can monitor only weather. They can monitor neither climate nor change. Both must be calculated from series of data points.
Of course it would be difficult to get a $433 million grant to monitor weather.
Re:Sensors can't monitor climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
Sensors can monitor only weather. They can monitor neither climate nor change. Both must be calculated from series of data points.
That's sort of like saying you can't measure the area of a room using a tape measure,. After all, you have to perform a calculation based on the measurements you collect; the tape measure doesn't have an "area" reading. By one sufficiently pedantic, narrow, arrogant, obnoxious measure, you could argue that you were correct--and you probably would get punched by a lot of tradespeople who recognized you were just being an insufferable prick instead of making a useful contribution.
The sensors - or the tape measure - are necessary tools for the process, even though they don't directly output the final processed result.
Re: (Score:1)
That's sort of like saying you can't measure the area of a room using a tape measure
That's exactly like saying you can't measure the area of a room using a tape measure. And it's true, as you acknowledge.
Why do you object to writing with clarity and precision? Why do you resort to insults?
Re: (Score:2)
Sensors can monitor only weather. They can monitor neither climate nor change.
That's why they aren't planning to turn them on for only one day and call it quits. The system is designed to collect data for decades.
Neon is quite a mess and everyone knows it... (Score:2)
Neon has been a mess for a long time. Feuds between scientists, notable acts of outright sabotage, shaky data from substandard instrumentation, overhead and management fees that approach two thirds of the entire budget, the list goes on.
The entire enterprise risks entire swaths of ecological science and debate because it has been so incompetent. Chaos.
Anyone who believes we don't have good data because of a lack of money needs to pay attention...the problem is that incompetent institutions are quite literal
Cheap lobbying (Score:2)
So we don't know where the money went? (Score:2)