O'Keefe is considered a budget and technology expert, and brings to NASA an apparent mandate to help sort out agency priorities and put the organization on better financial footing. He has made it clear to NASA officials and to Congress that OMB will not support any further funding of the space station program beyond that already approved.
The OMB advises the U.S. President on budget plans, and evaluates fiscal priorities, reporting, procedures, and policies of administration agencies.
In February, Bush announced his selection of O'Keefe for that OMB post. A month later, he was confirmed by the Senate to take on the job.
ISS: a program at a crossroads
Earlier this month, O'Keefe took on the increasing costs of building and running the station program.
In congressional testimony on November 7, before the Committee on Science in the House of Representatives, he labeled the ISS a "program at a crossroads." He has repeatedly made it known within NASA and Congressional groups that he is dismayed at the out-of-control finances of the ISS project.
"The Administration is very proud of the technical accomplishments of this program, as we all should be," O'Keefe said. However, he testified that "technical excellence at any cost is not an acceptable approach."
He pointed out that managing the program within cost and schedule must be elevated in importance -- particularly within the culture of NASA's Human Space Flight activities -- to be on a par with technical excellence.
In a somewhat cryptic message to Congress, O'Keefe may have been posting notice of his intent to aspire to the NASA top seat.
"New leadership [at NASA] is now necessary to continue moving the ball down the field with the goal line in sight. The [Bush] Administration recognizes the importance of getting the right leaders in place as soon as possible, and I am personally engaged in making sure that this happens," he explains.
Management style
When he tackled his current OMB position, O'Keefe took leave from Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. At the school he was director of National Security Studies, crafting high-level education programs for top managers in military and civilian Defense Department circles.
At the Maxwell School, O'Keefe created a series of lectures, some of which may give hints as to his style of managing NASA.
For instance, in his course on managing innovation, "professor" O'Keefe suggested that bureaucratic barriers at large organizations are steeped in "management isolation" and have an "intolerance of fanatics." He suggested that a formula for innovation is to have atmosphere and vision; orientation to the market; and engage in "skunk works" type of research and development concepts.
O'Keefe's lesson plans point out that managing by incrementalism avoids "bolt out of the blue" expectations. Overall, management must adopt flexibility, freeze planning only for strategic decisions; specify broad performance goals; and maintain a portfolio strategy.
In his teachings at the Maxwell School, O'Keefe pulled together themes for success in the art of high-tech management. Those themes include having business focus, adaptability, organization cohesion, entrepreneurial culture, and a sense of integrity.
The challenge, his lecture notes suggest, is to create an organization that kills off the dinosaurs. There is also need to promote an atmosphere of creativity, one in which a little chaos never hurts.
In this management area, O'Keefe quotes former NASA Administrator James Webb. It was Webb that guided the agency in its early days and spearheaded the shaping of the Apollo program, and said: "We were required to fly our administrative machine in a turbulent environment, and... a certain level of organizational instability was essential if NASA was not to lose control."
Public service duties
O'Keefe has close ties with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, thanks to his taking part in a Pentagon management team when Cheney was Defense secretary in the senior Bush White House days. Furthermore, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President George Bush in 1992 and had been comptroller for the Department of Defense in that administration.
In 1993, then President Bush and then Secretary Cheney presented O'Keefe the Distinguished Public Service Award. He was also the recipient of the Department of the Navy's Public Service Award in December 2000.
O'Keefe served on the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations staff for eight years, and was Staff Director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. His public service began in 1978 upon selection as a Presidential Management Intern.
He is the author of several journal articles, and contributing author of Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future, released in October 2000, and in 1998, co-authored The Defense Industry in the Post-Cold War Era: Corporate Strategies and Public Policy Perspectives.
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