Lets Start A Conversation About NASA's Future On The Web

 

Inspired by President Obama’s recent call to Bring Government into the 21st Century:

Bring Government into the 21st Century: Use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks. Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure the safety of our networks and lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices. http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/technology

…and his memorandum stating his objectives for Transparency and Open Government:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment 

…I figured it was time to start a new blog and a conversation about NASA’s future on the Web.

Let me start with a brief introduction of myself. I am the Chief Information Officer at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Being the CIO of a NASA field center means I am responsible for most of the IT infrastructure (networks, datacenters, systems, etc.) here at NASA Ames, and several NASA-wide services, including the NASA Security Operations Center. Before becoming CIO in 2007, I lead the strategic business development office at Ames where we forged several innovative new partnerships for the Agency (for example with Google, which made it to the news here and there). Prior to joining NASA, I helped create a number of cool businesses including Classmates.com and Escapia. I am 31 years old, and am the youngest member of the Senior Executive Service.

What do I plan to talk about? 

There are a wide variety of topics and projects that in my role of CIO of NASA’s field center in Silicon Valley I am passionate about. Given my background as a web entrepreneur, it should come as no surprise that these revolve to a large extent around the web. A long time interest of mine has been how can we weave NASA’s data into the fabric of the web, and what that will mean for the future of space exploration. What I like to do here on this blog is share with you an inside perspective of our space agency anno 2009 as NASA Ames CIO and talk about some of my thoughts and ideas on how NASA can align itself with the evolution of the web so as to be prepared and take full advantage of its transformative power moving forward (or as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt puts it: “Don’t fight the Internet“).

I will talk about NASA as an agency with its own set of challenges and opportunities. I will talk about the “cloud”, and how NASA is pioneering Federal Cloud Services. I will talk about tools. Like this blogging webapp that powers blogs.nasa.gov and that I use to write these blog posts online.

I will talk about the web as a platform… and how NASA will use this platform to share our data with the world.

I will talk about Silicon Valley… about new partnerships that we are forging here. I’ll give you my thoughts on how we are teaming up with some of the larger companies here in the Valley to syndicate one of NASA’s greatest resources, our scientific data and our out-of-this-world images and videos. I’ll talk about government policy, how it effects NASA, and discuss ways NASA as an agency can become more transparent by adopting new policies or revising existing ones.

I will talk about NASA Ames because there are a lot of great developments going on here, some of which we are executing as pilot projects for the entire Agency, and perhaps soon the entire Government.

Many interesting developments are going on all around the world, in many different disciplines, and it is by leveraging and correlating these at NASA that we will succeed in weaving NASA and space into the web and securing space and NASA as an instrinsic part of humankind’s scientific and cultural exploration of the 21st century. A quick example in case here: While NASA is actively engaged in testing the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet, Google’s Chief Technology Advocate Michael T. Jones at the recent AGU meeting in San Francisco advocates new models for sharing scientific data.

Moving forward, as more of us join the conversation here on blogs.nasa.gov, I can see a platform emerge where our relationship with the American public, our (potential) global audience of 1 billion connected people and counting, and our constituencies (scientists, engineers, enthusiasts) will become a collaborative one.

My vision for NASA’s future on the web is that of an open platform. A platform to share and host data, a platform that will leverage our data in new ways, for developers around the world to tap into our datasets, for the public to learn about NASA, and for scientists to collaborate. By opening this personal voice, I look forward to contribute my enthusiasm to this endeavour.

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19 thoughts on “Lets Start A Conversation About NASA's Future On The Web”

  1. Mr. Kemp, Congratulations on your recent appointment. In your introduction, you mention several times your interest in creating a more “open” web site. We have heard this term mentioned by most federal administrations lately, as part of a larger directive from the Obama administration. In an effort to “start a conversation”, may I ask what this term “open” means to you? The NASA website presently makes use of restricted multimedia formats which require either license agreements or they are covered by patents which restrict the playback software distribution. There are even text documents here which require Microsoft Word software to open. Do you have any thoughts on the data formats used on the public NASA websites, so that the electronic files can be used by more people and can be successfully archived for the future? Today, your office announced a collaboration to deliver a “Universe of Data” to school children, using Microsoft technology, under the Space Act Agreement. This is not a corporation known for open and freely distributable technology, to most computer users. Let us have that discussion on what “open” means here, before NASA locks away public data in proprietary formats that are not accessible to everyone.

  2. Hey Chris –

    I want to add some of my personal favorites to your list of topics: connected governance, leveraging social media (YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc.) to get NASA’s message out to the public (and get the public’s message back to NASA), Web 3.0 (semantic web), the use of open source, Google Apps, and of course the widespread and ubiquitous adoption of Web 2.0 tools and processes across NASA and across the Federal Government in general.

    Welcome to the world of transparency and open governement! 🙂

  3. Hi Chris,

    I appreciate your taking the “Transparency and Open Government” mission to heart in your blog. I’m curious to see how government agencies like yours, and also state and local government agencies, will venture into blog-building. I applaud your efforts and look forward to more constituents and citizens commenting!

    Well-done!

    Phil Johncock
    http://BlogCreationWorkshop.com

  4. Thanks for the blog post and your new initiative. Working at the National Defense University in Washington with former DOD CIO Linton Wells, we are about to release a well thought out research paper on social software and the government. Please get in touch and let me know how best to get it to you and any other NASA colleagues that may be interested.

  5. to matt burton: if you go to the top navigation and click on Posts, you’ll get the item that was posted today.

  6. Hey Chris,

    Thank you for the update on information from NASA. This is very exciting for me, as I am sure it is for you. This is a new era for government.

  7. Chris,

    Congrats on a very forward-thinking idea. I work at the Institute for the Future (a non-profit research group in Palo Alto) and we’ve been working on our own version of an open, collaborative platform that engages people from all over the world to share their thoughts on the future of science. This includes the future of space and space exploration as well.

    We’ve developed some interesting methodologies for engaging the public in this conversation. Would be happy to share more if you, or the readers of this blog, are interested. It’s an area I’m very interested in.

    Cesar

  8. This issue and forum are right on target. Not only is NASA dealing with the plethora of technologies and choices to get info shared (internal/external), but every other government agency and company are experiencing it also. Let’s start communicating.

  9. I appreciate your taking the “Transparency and Open Government” mission to heart in your blog. I’m curious to see how government agencies like yours, and also state and local government agencies, will venture into blog-building. I applaud your efforts and look forward to more constituents and citizens commenting!

    http://www.okus.in

  10. I'm going to be honest I am very envious of what you guys do and have achieved. It s every kids dream to go into space or every “nerd” kids dream ( ME! ) to work on space ship.

  11. Hi Chris,

    Thanks for providing us with this updated information from NASA. This is going to start new era for our govt definitely as one of the commenters above mentioned.

    And I definitely do hope your vision comes true – if NASA opens up its arms to the public, the world and especially our youth would definitely become a much more informed race.

    Jonathan Mayer

  12. i have bookmarked this blog to and am encouraged to see this as a a part of the push for openness. The one thing i believe in is the fact that its true to be open and with our government its going to be a hard push but should be a good one. Will check back often to see how this blog goes. I am a blogger and CIO of a company in texas and our policy is to be open with our employees and customers. Thanks for this heads up

  13. Hi Chris,

    I am curious to see how government agencies like yours, and also state and local government agencies, will venture into blog-building. I applaud your efforts and look forward to more constituents and citizens commenting!

    Well-done!

    Opensourceguy
    http://www.polasoftgroup.com

  14. Hello 🙂
    It’s great that you are thinking of increasing the scope of NASA on the internet, I suppose to give a wider range of people access to information about the progress you have and continue to make

    Whilst in principle this seems a good idea, my concern is with the lack of security on the internet. With the advent of phishing and hacking of websites becoming a day to day event, the public ‘forum’ for lack of a better word will have to be quite isolated from any of your other activities

    Webmaster
    http://niche-traffic-sale.blogspot.com

  15. nice blog keep up the good work I will comeback soon to read more articles
    thank you

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