Summary

Most of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) scientific and technical aeronautics publications are publicly available. The distribution of a few publications is restricted, depending on the kind of competitively sensitive information they contain. NASA sometimes interprets Freedom of Information Act requirements strictly to deny requests for information. NASA also broadly construes the concept of national security under the Arms Export Control Act to cover competitive sensitivity and recommends amendment or denial of export license applications. GAO did not find enough information to support the view that NASA's competitively sensitive information is being widely transferred to foreign competitors. NASA is trying to beef up its information control program. It is developing and implementing specific processes to identify and handle competitively sensitive information. It has also begun to establish an overall aeronautics technology transfer policy on the identification and handling as well as the measurement and tracking of competitively sensitive technologies.

GAO found that: (1) although most NASA scientific and technical aeronautics publications are publicly available, some documents are restricted depending on the type of sensitive information they contain; (2) NASA controls competitively sensitive information by implementing obstacles that make the identification of technical and scientific information more difficult; (3) there was no sufficient evidence to support conclusions that NASA transferred competitively sensitive information to foreign competitors; (4) the NASA Ames Research Center management review lacked sufficient evidence to support its findings; (5) although competitively sensitive information is not the subject of most Freedom of Information Act requests, requests for competitively sensitive information are likely to increase if Congress approves further development of commercially-relevant advanced subsonic technology; and (6) NASA has improved its information controls by implementing specific processes to handle competitively sensitive information and establishing an overall aeronautics technology transfer policy.