NASA Full Cost Initiative








	Managing under full cost is an important part of helping us to really understand what it takes to get things done in this Agency. Full cost is also an integral part of the Presidentís Management Agenda (PMA), and we have already made significant progress to date. We consider three components to full cost: Full cost budgeting: we are already well underway in this area. We have recast our FY03 budget and formulated our FY 04 budget in full cost. In fact, we have been given a ìGreenî under the Integrated Budget and Performance component of the Presidentís Management Agenda as a result of the successful completion of these activities. We continue to build on our successes as we formulate our FY05 budget in full cost. Full cost accounting: To do this we must reconfigure our IFM Core Financial module over the summer so that we can execute our FY04 budget. This is a new budget structure for us, incorporating our new Themes, and showing the full cost of related projects and supporting activities. Getting this done is on the critical path for the Full Cost Initiative. Full cost management: This is the tricky part! We realize that it is going to take time and effort to make full cost work for us. We know we are doing this right when we are using full cost information to make decisions to influence how we manage our Agency. We still need to get to ìGreenî in this part of the PMA. So, full cost is not really new for us. Though you may only recently have heard about the Full Cost Initiative, we initially started this process in 1995, and had a Full Cost Implementation Guide, commonly known as the Yellow Book, published in 1999. Many of the Centers have adopted to some degree the principles of full cost. Full cost has already helped our managers to make more complete and informed decisions on how we use the limited resources we have. For example, wind tunnels and fabrication services have been operating as service pools for some time now. The goals of the Full Cost Initiative We are nearly there for full cost, and this initiative is all about landing the plane. We have five very simple goals: -To revise and publish the Full Cost Implementation Guide (commonly known as the Yellow Book); -To prepare our systems to formulate and execute a theme-based budget in full cost; -To increase the level of communications to make information on full cost more accessible; -To educate and train our managers in the principles of full cost and how they should use it in their work; and -To institutionalize full cost management as a way of working