Financial Management Policy
Pursuant to the Chief Financial Officer’s Act, an Agency CFO is statutorily empowered to “direct, manage and provide policy guidance and oversight of agency financial management personnel, operations and activities” of their agencies. See 31 U.S.C. §902. NASA’s CFO has promulgated its agency-level financial management policies within the NASA Directives hierarchy, as more fully described in NASA Policy Directive (NPD) 9010.2, “Financial Management” and NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 1400.1G, “NASA Directives and Charters Procedural Requirements.” All agencywide financial management policies—NPDs, NPRs, and NASA Interim Directives (NIDs)—are accessible from the NASA Online Directives Information System (NODIS) Document Library at the 9000 series webpage.
These NPDs, NPRs and NIDs constitute the key Agency financial management policies. Areas covered range from budget formulation and execution, to internal controls and travel, to accounting. These directives are the key policy component of the financial management guidance structure provided to all NASA personnel.
In addition to this key agency-wide policy, NASA is regularly enhancing its financial management through various guidance, implementation instructions, systems instructions, and written procedures at both agency and center levels. All of this guidance is subordinate in hierarchy and must comply with Agency-level directives. This involves integrating federal financial laws and regulatory requirements into NASA’s financial management operational and systems framework to support NASA’s missions—fully complying with all external requirements while “delivering complete, reliable, consistent, and timely information … which is responsive to the financial information needs of agency management.” This guidance structure is designed to provide resources to assist NASA’s financial management community in the broad variety of their day-to-day activities, promote consistency among financial processes, procedures, data management and systems, and facilitate communication with NASA stakeholders.