The collection consists primarily of correspondence and memoranda issued by JPL Deputy Director Larry N. Dumas, from 1992 to 2000. The collection is split into five series: Chronological Files, Travel Files, Appointment Calendars, Viewgraph Presentations, and Miscellaneous Items. According to an interoffice memo dated June 3, 1993, the "Deputy Director serves as the Director's executive officer and the Laboratory's chief operating officer. Strategic planning and initiatives, including TQM [Total Quality Management], are carried out under his direction." This job description is illustrated in the collection. Chronological Files (Boxes 1-11; folders 1-108). The Chronological Files began in July 1992, at the time of Dumas becoming Deputy Director, and continued until December 2000. Although Dumas retired in August 2001, none of his chronological files from 2001 could be located. Represented in the collection repeatedly are letters requesting the hiring of Foreign Nationals. Dumas initially wrote to NASA Personnel Exchanges Officer Michael G. Moore. The letters were sent to Ruth Almony of the NASA Assessment and Technology Division, beginning in mid-1999. An October 9, 1992 memo to all employees announced that JPL, along with other NASA Centers and Federal Agencies, was beginning a transition to the use of metric units of measure for all activities. Dumas noted that the metric system was not new to JPL, that they had used it for interplanetary trajectory analysis since the beginning of the space age. The January 19, 1994 Northridge Earthquake and JPL's response dominated the Chron. files from January through March 1994. Included in the files is a letter to Dr. Blenda J. Wilson, President of California State University, Northridge, which suffered extensive damage. Possible layoffs were addressed in a May 12, 1994 interoffice memorandum to John Heie and Jim King, "Layoff Policies and Procedures". Attached to the memo was a paper written by two attorneys, Raymond R. Kepner and Richard E. Bromley, "How to Minimize Liability Arising from Reductions in Force." A January 12, 1996 memo to the Executive Council stated that due to the then current federal government funding crisis, JPL had been directed by NASA to study measures to minimize current funds expenditures. This affected JPL in hiring, procurements, travel, training, personnel moves and facility rearrangements, organizational/project newsletters, off-site seminars and retreats, consultants, and on-call employees. A September 20, 1996 memo to all JPL Employees and contractor personnel announced a workforce reduction of 300 work-years in FY '97 and another 700 work-years in FY '98. This reduction was explained due to the reduction of the R&D budget in the wake of the end of the cold war and reordering of national priorities. A follow-up memo regarding outsourcing was issued by Dumas on October 1, 1996. In the memo, he announced that two areas of work had been selected for outsourcing: Loan Pool and Instrumentation Services, and Desktop and Network Services. An e-mail thread, whose last entry was dated November 21, 1996, from Dumas, to John Casani, Sandy Cooper and Sue Henry, discussed the potential outsourcing of mission operations. Dumas indicated that the motivation for the downsizing was political, bipartisan and widespread. He believed that if JPL chose to ignore the pressures to downsize, their ability to acquire new work would be damaged, and that JPL would get unilateral action to downsize, as happened with DOD and DOE laboratories. A December 11, 1996 memo to JPL Employees announced the establishment of the office of JPL Ombudsperson. The office was intended as a place for employees to take work-related issues and grievances to for resolution. Lewis Redding was appointed as JPL's first Ombudsperson. A General Accounting Office Briefing, dated Match 17, 1997 was a Zero-Base Report titled "JPL Overview". This summarized historical milestones, funding, top ten discoveries in NASA's history, and JPL's role in each, Caltech's contract with NASA, and various change initiatives that JPL had underwent. In an April 10, 1997 memo, Dumas dusted off a script for a skit from the EC Retreat of 1988. The skit presented two alternatives for JPL in the year 2000: "Juggernaut Projects Laboratory" or "Just Plain Laboratory." A June 16, 1997 memo to John Casani, Kirk Dawson, William Harrison, Sue Henry and Henry Yohalem, had an attached draft entitled "Implementation Plan for Downsizing at JPL". An October 2, 1997 memo was to Helene Haase, Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). OFCCP had made assertions that JPL had been discriminating against females and minorities in 5 of 67 pay grades. Dumas expressed concerns over this finding. A November 19, 1997 presentation to Haase laid out JPL's defense. A December 1, 1997 letter to NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Science Earle Huckins notified NASA that JPL was seeking outside legal counsel regarding the OFCCP allegations. Dumas notified Haase from OFCCP in a separate letter, the same day as the Huckins letter. A brief listing of recent OFCCP Chronology, dated September 22, 1998, was compiled by Dumas. September 1, 1998 memo to Kirk Dawson, Charles Elachi, Daryal Gant, and Gael Squibb had attached a JPL NASA Y2K summary matrix schedule. Y2K preparations and planning continued throughout 1998 and 1999. This included a status review on Y2K from the Governing Program Management Council, in July 1998 and October 1998. Attached to a January 15, 1999 memo was presentation material from the second meeting. A February 17, 1999 memo to the JPL Senior Staff relayed that Senior Staff meetings and Director's Reviews were being discontinued, and replaced with Institutional and Program Office forums and Governing Program Management Council (GPMC) meetings, open to all interested JPL personnel. The Senior Staff charter was retired and the Senior Staff mailing list would no longer be maintained or used. The Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) spacecraft began to experience a problem during its second pass over a ground station, following a successful launch on March 4, 1999 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Excessive venting of hydrogen from the spacecraft caused the spacecraft to spin out of control and deploy its aperture cover. The status of WIRE was relayed to JPL Employees and contractor personnel on March 8, 1999. A review board to investigate the WIRE anomaly was formed on March 5, 1999. An April 14, 2000 letter to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin expressing thanks for Goldin's leadership and support after the loss of the Mars '98 missions was signed by the entire Executive Council. Travel Files (Boxes 12-15; Folders 109-201). The collection consists primarily of travel documentation for Dumas. The records in the collection are sporadic for 1992 and 1993. Missing entirely were travel files from 1995, 1996, 2000 and 2001. Dumas presented a paper, "Faster, Better, Cheaper: An Institutional View" at International Astronautical Federation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 1999. A copy of his paper, as well as a travel folder, is in the series. Appointment Calendars (Boxes 15-16; folders 202-208). Represented in the collection are Dumas' appointment calendars from 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, and 1999 only. Viewgraph Presentations (Box 16; folders 209-210). Represented in the collection are paper copies of Viewgraphs and presentations for 1994 and 1998. These were the only two years that presentations were separated from the Chronological and Travel Files. Other years were represented in the Chron. Files or the Travel Files.
