Roundup Presents: The Directors Series (LA)

Show Me the Money

At a time when budgets across the federal government remain tight and NASA is laser-focused on new destinations and groundbreaking science, Sid Schmidt, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, is integrating financial data and risk analysis to position Johnson as a trailblazer in risk leadership.

Schmidt, who has spent his entire 35-year career in the organization, was named Johnson’s chief financial executive in March. He now directs the Office of the CFO (OCFO), which supports the finances of every organization on-site. During his tenure, Schmidt has worked directly with both operations and support programs, equipping him with unique insights that are leading to smarter decisions about risk acceptance.

In an environment with limited resources, decisions about the cost of an incremental improvement to one project in place of another can become critical. To help programs make the smartest decisions about which projects to invest in, OCFO is modeling financial risk analysis to consciously factor risk management into financial decision making.  

Schmidt accepts the JSC Director's Innovation Award in 2019.

“We are actually an agency leader in evaluating risk as a core element of financial decision making,” Schmidt said. “We partner with center management and the Johnson-managed programs to develop an accurate understanding of their risk tolerance and help them to understand the return on investment when applied to different projects.”

Risk leadership is just one example of how Schmidt is empowering his team to use data analytics to evolve as experts for the programs. Far from simply tracking spending and payroll, Schmidt sees his team as master storytellers, enabling NASA’s leaders to use information in new and exciting ways to allow them to make crucial decisions as efficiently as possible.

“Every number tells a story,” Schmidt said. “Our job is to take these mountains of information and transform them into something meaningful for someone who doesn’t spend their day analyzing spreadsheets and budgets.”

OCFO characterizes this process of sifting through data to create a compelling story as “analytical curiosity.” The full team, which leverages a united front of accountants and analysts to project future spending requirements and accurately account for the thousands of transactions taking place at Johnson every day, needs to be diligent and have a curiosity about the process to ensure that every transaction is planned and accounted for.

“Every penny has a home, but it may get touched by a dozen layers before it gets to the point where it is spent,” Schmidt said.

To find the proper home for each dollar, accountants maintain the financial documents to ensure that money available when it is needed, whether for travel, payroll or a p-card purchase. Analysts spend their time working with all the directorates at Johnson, creating financial goals and planning spending throughout the fiscal year, to ensure there is money in the right pots for each expense.

The 2019 OCFO team picture.

These two roles work closely together so that OCFO can unite across Johnson to enable mission success center-wide.

“The true value of the organization is when we have the chance to sit down with project managers to talk about the work that needs to be accomplished, how much money is available and create a plan to make sure that we can enable their programs and missions to be successful,” Schmidt said.

With every Johnson program being so distinctive, the team has explored different funding models to facilitate successful and timely missions — but Schmidt wants even more collaboration. Under the Mission Support Future Architecture Program, commonly known as MAP, OCFO is adapting a more standardized agency process that reduces red tape and makes it easier to work across different directorates, programs and even centers.

Schmidt hopes that this will eventually lead to time savings for the analysts, as they won’t need to learn program-specific languages and tools to plan spending for each organization. This is the first important step in saving the time and resources needed to track and move money, and Schmidt already has his eyes set on the next innovation.

“We are starting to make investments that will automate more traditional processes and enable our team to spend more time focusing on projections and analysis, rather than tracking and chasing down numbers,” Schmidt said. “We are in a unique role where we can add a lot of value to the agency by further advancing our level of automation.”

With an eye toward the extra time that analysts will have available as automation takes hold, Schmidt has started to make investments in his workforce to develop Johnson’s next generation business leaders. He has done this by creating an OCFO leadership development program targeted at early and mid-career employees.

Schmidt on a tour to visit the AA-2 Orion Capsule with NASA CFO Jeff DeWit during his visit to Johnson.

These are one-year programs where a cohort of eight to 12 employees unite to develop innovative business skills and strategies. The early career employees focus on networking opportunities and collaboration across the directorate while the mid-career employees learn leadership and project management skills to prepare them for leadership roles.

These leaders will play key roles in NASA’s future, allowing the agency to do more with less. With OCFO leveraging the funding available, programs that will open up the universe — like Artemis — will be empowered and equipped to build a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

As NASA segues from low-Earth orbit to a robust exploration plan encompassing the solar system, OCFO is poised to assist in this transformative future with a metamorphosis of their own. Science fiction can become reality, but only if the resources come first.

Noah J. Michelsohn, Johnson Space Center

Sidney Schmidt is the chief financial officer at NASA's Johnson Space Center . This story is part 17 of The Directors Series, highlighting Johnson’s mission of Dare. Unite. Explore. Stay tuned for stories from each directorate and find  previous stories on the directors website.