NASA has been named the 2004 Agency of the Year by a
federal organization honoring excellence in financial
management. NASA was honored for its implementation of the
Web Time and Attendance Distribution System (WebTADS), a Web-
based system that collects employee time and attendance
information.
The Federal Financial Managers Council, Western Region award
recognizes federal organizations that show skilled economic
administration and cost-saving practices. The council is an
independent committee of the San Francisco Bay Area Federal
Executive Board.
WebTADS helps more than 19,000 NASA civil service employees
at agency installations record hours worked; manage overtime
hours and process leave requests. Software developers at
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.,
created the application.
The developers implemented the system in 2001 to replace
Marshall’s aging computer mainframe-based time and attendance
system. Recognizing the advantages of the system, NASA
established agency-wide standards for time and attendance,
and began introducing WebTADS at agency field centers in
2002.
“WebTADS has become a tremendous asset throughout NASA, and
this recognition speaks very highly of the team that
developed it,” said Susan Foster, chief financial officer at
Marshall. “It’s an honor to be recognized for a job well
done, and even more gratifying to know that work done here
has benefited all of NASA,” she added.
“Our goal was to create a standardized system the entire NASA
workforce could use to manage time and labor data,” said Bill
Vaughn, project manager for development of the WebTADS system
at Marshall. “We created a program that’s user-friendly and
makes the collection of the data as simple as possible,”
Vaughn said.
The 28 Federal Executive Boards across the country provide
closer coordination among U.S. federal agencies outside
Washington. Council members are federal employees with
interests in financial management, accounting and budgeting.
