William S

The following is a letter from Douglas Richstone, for the joint subcommittee of the OC and the AOC-G,
to William Smith of AURA, reviewing the GNIRS program management practices on April 27, 1999.

William S. Smith
Vice President, Programs
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.
Suite 350
1200 New York Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC 20005

May 21, 1999

Dear Bill:

On April 9, you charged a joint subcommittee of the OC and the AOC-G to study the management practices of the USGPO, especially with regard to its monitoring of instrumentation contracts for the IGP. The committee was composed of Bruce Carney and Art Walker from the OC, and Domenick Tenerelli and Douglas Richstone from the AOC-G. The charge is attached.

On Tuesday April 27, we visited NOAO. Prior to the visit, we had an opportunity to study the following documents:

The GNIRS Workscope;

The MIRI Workscope and Contract;

Statements of Roles and Responsibilities from US Gemini Project Scientist and SCOPE Director Todd Boroson;

Gemini Work Package Manager Mark Trueblood;

GNIRS Project Manager Neil Gaughan;

GNIRS Project Scientist Jay Elias;

GNIRS Project Scientist Dick Joyce;

USGP Program Plan and Annual Report for FY 96 through 99;

Advance Viewgraphs from Todd Boroson;

The External Review of the Cost, Schedule, Performance and Management of the GNIRS Project (1998- "The Smith Report");

The NOAO Organization Chart as Proposed to the Smith Report, and as revised by that team;

Working Agreement Between the IGP and NOAO;

Policies for Effective USGP Management of US-Assigned Gemini Instruments (an appendix to the working agreement).

During the course of our visit on April 27 we spoke with Boroson, NOAO Director Sidney Wolff, Trueblood (by phone), Gaughan, MIRI Project Manager Tom Kisco (by phone), and IGP Director Matt Mountain. We thank you for helping to arrange the visit and all of the interviewees for making themselves available and for forthrightly answering all of our questions. We especially thank Kathryn Kataisto for helping us with the meeting.

During the course of our visit we drew a number of positive conclusions:

1. Oversight of the GNIRS and MIRI projects by USPO now seems adequate and up to the standards of the space community. The work package manager appears to be fully engaged with the contractors who are responsible to him.

2. The GNIRS team now appears well managed and highly motivated. We were persuaded that the plan from now up to the restart review is sound; indeed, one of our committee felt it was a textbook example of engineering management.

3. The working relationships between USGPO and U. Florida seem to be excellent.

4. Both GNIRS and MIRI are using modern management tools and USGPO is working with them.

These positive conclusions left us optimistic that GNIRS and MIRI were now under good supervision by USGP (although we note some suggested oversight improvements below). At the same time, we were concerned about a number of issues with regard to USGPO, which might have significant long-term consequences for the ability of the US astronomy community to provide future instruments for Gemini.

First, we are concerned about the priority of USGPO within the NOAO organization. The McCray Committee recommended that Gemini be the highest priority effort within NOAO. Currently, the US Gemini Project Scientist's primary role is as Associate Director for Science Operations (SCOPE). The rationale for co-locating many NOAO activities within a single division, including instrumentation capabilities, observing proposals, and time allocation, makes sense for an organization with decreasing means. It also fosters use of the NOAO facilities as a "system", including Gemini and NOAO, both north and south. However, in the current management structure, SCOPE appears to have equal weight with KPNO and CTIO in these tasks, and USGP is subsidiary to SCOPE overall and hence is not on a par with the Associate Directors of KPNO and CTIO.

Therefore: to focus the efforts of NOAO in terms of its defined priorities, the SCOPE division should be re-organized. The USGP should enjoy management parity with the other sites that NOAO serves, including Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo, and NSO. Therefore the Associate Director of NOAO should be the "Associate Director for the US Gemini Project" and SCOPE should be managed within USGP rather than vice versa.

In addition to the prioritization of USGPO within NOAO, there appears to be a significant problem with the fraction of the jobs that are actually being done by USGPO.

Complex state of the art instruments such as GNIRS cannot be successfully designed, fabricated, tested, and placed in operation without the leadership of one or more scientists who are experienced in the critical technologies, and inspired to achieve the advance in capability that is essential to resolving a set of scientific problems that fire their imagination. Individuals with the necessary experience also recognize and respect the critical role that project management and engineering leadership and innovation play in successfully completing the development of a sophisticated astronomical instrument within the constraints of schedule and budget. Scientists, managers, and engineers that are capable of leading such an effort are rare, and it is more often than not the case that no single institution has the personnel resources to mount a successful instrument development alone. One of the roles of USGPO is to evaluate the personnel resources of each proposing team,, and to insure that these resources are indeed available to the project. Clearly, this task was not accomplished successfully for GNIRS. We strongly suggest that USGPO develop a strategy that will encourage the formation of collaborations, and procedures that permit a more careful evaluation of the capabilities and commitment of proposers. The use of a multiphase procurement procedure, and the award of small grants to clarify the status of critical technologies and to develop detailed cost and staffing models before the final selection of a hardware fabrication team has frequently turned out to be cost effective.

We therefore recommend that USGPO carefully review NASA's practice of forming an Instrument Definition Team that brings together the groups that have expertise in the relevant technologies, and individuals who have a deep understanding of the critical scientific issues, to develop an instrument concept (or concepts) and a strategy for instrument procurement, before issuing an invitation to propose a hardware development.

Within NOAO's contribution to the Gemini project, there are five roles that must be filled: SCOPE director, USGP Director; USGP Project Manager; representative of the US science interests in Gemini; and project broker. At present, only the managerial role is being well handled. There are several different ways to cover these tasks, depending on the people involved, but there is no denying that the remaining jobs are simply too complex and demanding to be filled by one person. The ability of NOAO to broker instrument deals with universities in the future will be critical. The present strategy doesn't seem to be working. A better approach would be to have a project scientist and project manager on equal footing reporting to the USGP director, with the USGP director and project scientist dividing the four roles (other than manager) noted above. Delegation of authority is crucial.

Therefore, we recommend that the Project Manager be elevated to a level comparable to the Project Scientist and they both report to a project director, with a clear division of responsibilities. The job requires more scientists than are now assigned.

Our discussions with the workpackage manager and the managers of MIRI and GNIRS lead us to believe that their experience and frequent contact permit the detection of incorrect paper reports of progress. At the same time, we suggest the following addition to the current regimen, which would improve USGPO oversight of instrument packages.

The review committee strongly recommends that the USGP carry out quarterly reviews for each of the US instruments under their supervision. The review should be given to the USGP Scientist and the USGP Director (if they are different) as well as the USGP Manager and should not be delegated. The review should contain as a minimum the following:
Program Overview (summary of key accomplishments)
Program Status and Plans (Summary)
Program Problems and Concerns Program Schedule (including Critical Path)
Program Milestones, Cost and Manpower charts
Program Budget and Expenditures to date
Organization (identify any changes)

--with a similar structure for major subsystems, such as optics. In addition the subsystems should have a detailed review of design and analysis status. The written understanding regarding "Policies for Effective USGP Management of US-Assigned Gemini Instruments" is extremely useful. However, our discussion with the NOAO director and the USGPO Project Scientist left us a little uncertain about their understanding of USGPO's oversight reporting responsibilities.

We therefore strongly recommend that the AURA President clearly mandate in writing the USGP Director's authority to communicate directly with him/her regarding Gemini Instrumentation matters, especially with respect to contracts oversight.

During the course of our review, we were told that IGPO objected to bullet 3 in the "Policies for Effective USGP Management ..." document noted above. IGPO states they now do not object to the wording. However during our interview Wolff made a more succinct statement which we thought might be substituted. It was: "any discussions that lead to real agreements or to changes in costs, scope or schedule must include USGPO. Discussions that simply involve exchanges of technical information need not include USGPO."

We suggest that the IGP and NOAO Directors now reconfirm their understanding on this point.

We were exposed to difficulties regarding the creation of Interface Control Documents for Gemini instruments. The NOAO perspective reflects concerns that ICDs are constructed without negotiation and can change. The IGPO perspective is that it is impossible to reach a definite agreement with NOAO without "the Director in the room". This issue surfaced late in the day and we lack a deep understanding of what is in part a misunderstanding. However, the absence of an ICD for the Hawaii-provided On-Instrument Wave-Front Sensor is a time critical problem for GNIRS development.

The ICD for the OIWFS is time-critical to the GNIRS design in progress and should be provided promptly.

As we have stated above, our perceptions of NOAO/USGPO management and the suggestions in this report do not correspond to an immediate crisis. We did not see indications that MIRI or GNIRS were threatened by substantial (further, in the case of GNIRS) slips in cost or budget. At the same time, we believe that, as it is presently configured and performing, USGPO is inadequately structured or staffed to broker and monitor future US instruments and to represent US science interests within the Gemini project. We have made recommendations above to deal with this problem. These recommendations may not represent an optimal course for dealing with these issues. Other choices may be better. The problems however, are real. Some changes are necessary in order for the US Astronomy community to benefit fully from the Gemini Project.

Sincerely,

Douglas Richstone

for the joint subcommittee.