It is NASA policy to a. Protect the public, NASA workforce, high-value equipment and property, and the environment from potential harm as a result of NASA activities and operations by factoring safety as an integral feature of programs, projects, technologies, operations, and facilities. b. Establish and maintain independent lines of communications for unrestricted flow of information and adjudication of dissenting opinions concerning any matters affecting the ability to meet the safety and mission success requirements and criteria. c. Hold NASA leaders, managers, supervisors, and employees accountable for safety and mission success within their assigned areas of responsibility. d. Define and document both safety and mission success requirements and criteria in NASA programs and projects as a foundation for the design and development of safe and reliable program hardware and software. e. Require all acquisition instruments as specified by the NASA Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to appropriately address SMA processes so that the responses to these instruments describe the approach to be used to implement SMA and to manage the associated safety and mission success risk factors. f. Verify and validate life-cycle implementation of the SMA processes and any related safety and mission success requirements through ongoing surveillance of program, project, and contractor processes. g. Certify the safety and operational readiness of hazardous or mission critical hardware and software (including flight systems, support equipment, facilities/operations, ground-based systems) through a process of formal review of the compilation of validation and verification information. h. Address safety and mission success concerns, requirements noncompliance, risks and risk acceptance, and appropriate lessons learned at all major management reviews, other major milestone review activities, and operational readiness reviews. i. Use qualitative and quantitative risk assessment techniques to develop information for making informed decisions regarding safety and mission success within a structured and formal decision process.