Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the status of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) efforts to achieve reductions and efficiencies in key areas of its infrastructure.

GAO found that: (1) NASA plans for a $2.8-billion reduction in the current replacement value of its facilities will yield only about $250 million in cost reductions through fiscal year (FY) 2000; (2) NASA has experienced problems in assessing cost-reduction opportunities because it did not thoroughly evaluate cost-reduction options, excluded many systems in its review of ways to cut supercomputer costs, performed questionable initial studies for aircraft consolidation, made inappropriate closure recommendations, and overstated cost-reduction estimates; (3) although environmental cleanup costs could affect facility disposition efforts, NASA lacks a policy for identifying other responsible parties and sharing cleanup costs; (4) a joint effort between NASA and the Department of Defense to study potential operation cost reductions through increased cooperation and sharing yielded no specific recommendations for closures, consolidations, or cost reductions but did identify barriers to sharing and increasing interagency reliance; and (5) NASA ability to reach its workforce reduction goal by 2000 is subject to some major uncertainties, and NASA may need to plan a reduction in force if enough employees do not retire or resign voluntarily.