GAO Criticized IG Earlier This Year

Three months after being criticized in a Government Accountability Office report, NASA Inspector General Robert Cobb submitted a letter of resignation to the White House on Thursday. President Barack Obama accepted Cobb's resignation, which is effective April 11.

"I have been honored to serve the United States over the past seventeen years, first at the Office of Government Ethics, then at the White House, and for the last seven years as Inspector General," Cobb wrote in his letter. "A new Inspector General will find an organization with extraordinarily talented employees dedicated to rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse and promoting the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of NASA."

If that's the case, it would appear Cobb's last three months on the job were busier than preceding ones.

As ANN reported, a 77-page report issued by the Government Accountability Office in January showed Cobb ranked next to last compared to inspectors in 27 other federal agencies in managing costs and looking for ways to save taxpayers money. The report stated Cobb failed in his role as financial watchdog for the agency, saving taxpayers only 36 cents for every dollar the GAO has spent on his department -- when others in his role in other agencies averaged $9.49 saved per dollar spent.

The GAO also said Cobb spent too much time on investigations irrelevant to saving money, didn't conduct enough audits, and failed to make recommendations for saving money on those he did.

FMI: http://oig.nasa.gov