According to NASA's former auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), NASA's finances are a mess, with major errors in its last financial statements and insufficient documentation. NASA has claimed that the problems were due to a complicated transition from a system that used several different accounting programs to a new integrated accounting system. According to PwC, the financial chaos stems from basic accounting mistakes and a breakdown in NASA's internal controls.

For this discussion, refer to Shaw's article, "NASA's Bookkeeping System Still Won't Fly After $565 Billion in 'Adjustments'," and complete the following:

As a hired accounting consultant, describe the financial and accounting problems at NASA.

Provide some recommendations for getting this troubled organization back on track.

Research the current state of NASA's accounting problems and discuss whether your recommendations were implemented.

Use any available resources to complete your discussion.

Post your initial response by midnight Wednesday of this unit week.

Please help with this problem

May 20--WASHINGTON - Nearly two-and-a-half years after NASA chief Sean O'Keefe vowed to straightern up the agency's bookkeeping, the effort continues to struggle, "It may be years before NASA can get a clean audit," said Robert Cobb, the agency's inspector general during a hearing Wednesday of a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee A plan to unify the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's 10 field centers and its Washington headquarters under a single accounting system a program that will cost the agency roughly $1 billion - has created even more short-term chaos Big problems emerged when PriceWaterhouseCoopers, NASA's former auditor, tried to take stock of the agency's 2003 accounts There were so many mistakes, as the agency tried to convert seven years of budget data into the new accounting system, that NASA had to make $565 billion worth of "adjustments" to its financial statements, without adequate documentation. In addition, PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that NASA had made a $2 billion adjustment - without supporting documents - - to its end-of-the-year account balance to make it jibe with the figure recorded by the U.S. Treasury The General Accounting Office, in testimony provided Wednesday, likened the move to simply changing the figures in a checkbook without figuring out why the original numbers were wrong Gwendolyn Brown, NASA's chief financial officer, said at the hearing that the $565 billion in adjustments were a result of quirks in the new system. When a figure was put into the wrong category, she said, it would effectively be counted three times including when it was removed and when it was re-entered in the cormect spot. Brown said the $2 billion change was the result of an "oversight" and that the agency is now reviewing years of financial statements to find the original error. "Basically, I'm reconciling my checkbook for the last five years," she said While the new accounting system has had serious problems, Cobb and two representatives from the GAO told the committee that they are confident the system will eventually work. The important point is going forward and not letting it happen again," said Gregory Kutz, director of financial management and assurance at the GAO The GAO, essentially the watchdog for Congress, has hounded NASA about its financial management for more than a decade, for everything from sloppy bookkeeping with its numerous contractors to failing to properiy account for rising costs on the intemational space station. When President Bush appointed O'Keefe in late 2001, the new administrator conceded be was "a budgeteer, not a rocketeer," but he vowed to change the agency's reputation as a black hole for tax dollars