NASA at 50: Interviews with NASA's Senior Leadership by Rebecca Wright & Sandra Johnson & Steven J. Dick

Author:Rebecca Wright & Sandra Johnson & Steven J. Dick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NASA
Published: 2012-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Robert W. Cobb

Inspector General for NASA

The Inspector General (IG) for NASA conducts objective oversight of NASA programs and operations and independently reports to the Administrator, Congress, and the public to further the Agency’s accomplishment of its mission. Attorney Robert Cobb came to this position in 2002 after 15 years in government service that included working for 9 years in the Office of Government Ethics and for 15 months in the Office of the Counsel to the President.

After being confirmed by the United States Senate, Cobb was appointed to the position of Inspector General in April of 2002, where he remained until April 2009. In an interview on 20 March 2007 at NASA Headquarters, he explained the responsibilities of this position and the IG office.

The mandate under the Inspector General Act for Inspectors General is to root out fraud, waste, and abuse and promote the economy and efficiency of the agency where the Inspector General resides. That is an extraordinarily broad mandate, and so there’s a tremendous amount of discretion in terms of how the resources that are given to an Inspector General Office are applied. Organizationally, we have two fundamental business lines. One is audit, and the other is investigation.

The investigations focus primarily on violations of law, and that includes criminal laws. So our investigative team has law enforcement authority, pursuant to which they act as federal law enforcement officials, conducting investigations, coordinating investigations of violations of criminal statutes with the appropriate prosecutorial teams, which are usually the United States Attorneys’ offices for the various districts in which the investigations occur.

With respect to the Office of Audits, we have responsibilities in terms of carrying out the financial statement audit, which we use a contractor to perform, and we do that both under the IG Act, but also under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act. In addition, we conduct myriad performance audits, again with respect to the broad mandate to promote the economy and efficiency of the Agency. We employ these audits really to see where we can add value in terms of the Agency’s execution of its mission.

How does the mission of this office historically compare to today’s mission?

The mission hasn’t changed. Fundamentally, the objective of providing independent and objective reviews of Agency programs and operations is the thrust of it. Since the Inspector General Act was passed in 1978, there have been some modifications and some additional mandates that are occasionally included in the IG Act or in other law.

It is an attempt under our constitutional framework to have an internal oversight function that can report not only to the Administrator for purposes of the benefit of the Agency, and that the Agency can respond to that internal oversight, but also to provide some sunlight and transparency into the government’s operations and the Agency’s operations to the elected officials on Capitol Hill, so that they may take such legislative and other action as appropriate in fulfillment of their oversight responsibility.

At various times there are some differences in philosophy in terms of how the mission is executed.

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