The US$116 million financials upgrade is the cornerstone of a larger project, dubbed the Integrated Enterprise Management Program, which is expected to cost $1.1 billion. The IEMP uses R/3 financial applications from SAP AG, and when completed, it's expected to improve financial, contractual, asset management and other procedures throughout NASA.

However, critics claim that five years into the estimated eight-year project, the IEMP has suffered from end-user resistance, data integration problems and a lack of oversight.

Last month, NASA's Office of the Inspector General found flaws in the management of IEMP contracts and demanded improvement. "Despite the criticality of IEMP to the agency, NASA's monitoring of the contracts was informal and inadequate to ensure that IEMP products and services were procured in a satisfactory, cost-effective manner," according to the report.

For example, the report stated that as of September 2004, five of 14 SAP-related projects, worth $16.5 million, were for services not even officially funded. The inspector general's office warned that the lack of centralized oversight could impede NASA's ability to manage the contracts, and it urged that a single set of vendor policies be established.

End-user concerns