Introduction: Redux

The goal of starting up the NASA Ames CIO blog here last week was to share some exciting projects our team here at Ames is working on and to encourage dialogue and participation.  Based on all the feedback and comments, we’re off to a tremendous start! Thank you for all of the constructive feedback and comments on the first posts, both here and on the other sites where this blog is syndicated. Rather than responding to each of these comments individually, let me respond to some of the overall themes and elaborate on a few things that were mentioned in the introductory post.

Openness and Innovation – We vs. I

You probably sensed a lot of “passion” in my first post, and this is exactly what makes NASA so cool. It’s what we all share for what we are doing here at NASA — it’s what brought me here and why this is a great time to be at NASA, at Ames and in Silicon Valley and to be part of this incredible team of people.  There has been a lot of discussion about the role of the team (We) versus the role of the individual (I) and what a Blog is, and how it relates to Center and Agency policy. Perspectives shared on a personal blogs by a public officials raise many questions for bureaucracies designed for consensus-based decision making and diffused responsibility.  When a public official says something on a blog, does this reflect public policy, or the opinion of the public official?  This topic deserves much more time and space, but others have been thinking about the issues presented by blogging, including David Wyld at the IBM Center for The Business of Government at SLU, who recently published The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0.  What I will add to the conversation today is that one individual in an any large organization will not accomplish anything significant.  Teams can make significant things happen.

Standing On the Shoulders of Giants

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to contribute to NASA. For me to even be able to talk about a personal vision for NASA’s future on the web would not have been possible without the passion and dedication of several generations of my colleagues, both here at NASA Ames and at our other NASA centers around the country. I’d like to acknowledge a couple comments from my colleagues. One was from Brian Dunbar, NASA’s Web Manager in Washington D.C. Another was from George Alger, who managed the people that now comprise most of the IT organization at Ames. Both have dedicated their careers to NASA and have built great teams and solid infrastructures. Brian and his team brought www.nasa.gov from this to this since 2003. George and his team built a solid infrastructure at Ames that was ahead of its time (in fact, the logical zoned network architecture George built at Ames five years ago is the “to be” state for the rest of the Agency over the next five years).  The comments from George, who retired last year, and from Brian at NASA Headquarters remind me of how fortunate we are at NASA to have a culture that welcomes new ideas and diversity. I can assure you that Pete Worden and the leadership here at Ames have fostered this environment.

Collaboration with Microsoft and Concerns about Open Standards

While much of NASA’s data is technically available to the public, in many cases it’s far less accessible than it could be.  Making NASA content accessible in platforms like Microsoft World Wide Telescope and Google Earth make content far more accessible to a much greater audience of people.  It should be noted that all of the data will be accessible through open, public APIs, and in both of these examples Microsoft and Google have reimbursed NASA for the time and resources spent translating and hosting the data for their platforms.

Closing Thoughts

To be clear: the primary purpose of this blog is to share information, ideas and have a conversation that will lead to better and more informed decisions as we forge ahead into this new era of government in the age of web 2.0. In its charter, the Space Act of 1958, NASA is required to make its data available to the public to the greatest extent possible.
 
The last paragraph of the introductory post said… “If you are interested in following this blog…” however, I am not looking for followers, but to create an opportunity for those interested in having a conversation about NASA’s future to share their ideas. So, please continue your feedback and your ideas on how to improve NASA’s web presence and let’s make this is an ongoing conversation about NASA’s future on the web.
 

Why Make A Universe of Data Available To The Public?

 

Over the past 50 years, NASA has taken people into space, to the surface of the moon, and has allowed people to see Earth, other planets in our solar system, and the depths of space through the eyes of satellites, telescopes, robots, and through the cameras of astronauts. With each passing decade, advances in technology made images clearer, the information coming back from space richer, and the world smaller.

In 1969, America watched on television as NASA landed on the Moon. In 1997, America downloaded “live” images of Mars on the Internet. Ten years from now, how will America experience and participate in the new era of space exploration? How will NASA leverage zettabytes of data to the benefit of humanity?

This is the intro of a white paper I am currently working on. In this white paper I am taking a look at NASA’s current external facing web presence, and with an outlook of what space exploration and the web might look like 10 years from now, describe how I think NASA should re-architect itself in order to fully leverage the web as platform and take the lead in open, transparent and participatory space exploration and government (previous post).

I am reminded again of this intro while reading our announcement today – we’re teaming up with Microsoft to make a universe of data available to the public.

A little over 2 years ago, in my previous role as strategic business development lead here at NASA Ames, I negotiated the NASA Google collaboration. At the time, I aspired it to be the first in a series of Space Act Agreements NASA would sign with companies that share my vision to make NASA’s data – and America’s investment in space exploration – more accessible to the world on the Internet. Having since moved on to become the NASA Ames Chief Information Officer, today’s announcement of our collaboration with Microsoft – which we worked on for over 18 months – signifies another exciting step in this direction.

Moving towards a web of data
Working with partners such as Microsoft, Google, and Cisco to share our data with the world is part of a larger strategy that ties in with the next evolutionary phase of the web as we move from a web of linked documents to a web of linked data. These last few weeks I have been excited to read about our new Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and his plans to establish Data.gov to provide the public with access to all federal information that is not private or restricted for national security reasons. As I said two years ago, NASA has gathered more data about the solar system than any other agency in the world, and I look forward to working with Vivek and our team at NASA to increase the public accessibility of this data.

Developing a new space data architecture
Our agreement with Microsoft is unique in the sense that we will host the NASA data here at NASA Ames (over 100 terabytes) and serve it on the web through the WorldWide Telescope (WWT) platform. In a sense, we are using the context rich environment of WWT through our partnership with Microsoft to provide our audience a window into the universe of data we have gathered and continue to gather with our satellites and telescopes.
This data will be hosted on a new cloud platform built on open source technology that was specifically designed to host vast quantities of scientific data. The platform will enable scientists to build applications on a common, secure framework. Several new pilot projects built on this platform will be coming out in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned…

And in honor of the recent successful launch of the NASA Kepler mission, let me leave you with this intruiging thought I recently came across in this article:

The night sky is essentially a database, crammed with information in the form of electromagnetic radiation, known more generically as light.