NASA Participatory Exploration Policy Recommendations
Participatory Exploration Policy Recommendations for National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Participatory exploration was first introduced in 2007 at the NASA Participatory Exploration Summit at Ames Research Center and was prioritized into the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 6063), highlighting its necessity to NASA’s continued public relevance in the 21st century. We have written a paper for NASA senior management that discusses the role of “participatory exploration” as a way of “aggregating and leveraging people’s contributions in ways that are useful to other people” which can be applied to NASA programs and projects to engage the American public in the exploration experience and to identify opportunities for the direct involvement of the public, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and international partners. The paper includes specific recommendations which we have summarized below. We’ve posted the paper on openNASA for your consideration and encourage you to share your thoughts on Participatory Exploration as well. Please share your thoughts via the comments below or on if you have specific ideas or recommendations, via the ideas forum.
Eliminate the obstacles to working with the public
– Encourage open-source adoption
– Leverage the re-competition of NASA’s website
– Implement single sign-on
Increase the availability of NASA knowledge and data
– Create open APIs for NASA data
– Improve internal knowledge-sharing between technical and business groups
– Develop a rich, extensible, and user-editable directory of employee information
– Implement categories and “tagging” on all NASA web content
– Provide hosting for open, public research notes
– Refine policies on controlled sensitive space-related information
– Streamline information release policies
– Encourage participatory exploration early in a mission as a Level-1 requirement
Modify communication practices:
– Integrate participatory exploration into the Agency’s Strategic Communications Strategy
– Encourage open publication of all internal Agency communications
– Deploy industry proven Web 2.0 communication tools and processes agency-wide
– Benchmark against successful organizations that have adopted Web 2.0 strategies
– Provide a structure to train employees to interact with newly-contacted communities
– Consider corporate blogging and community-building skills when hiring staff
– Build and create formal processes to leverage voluntary collaborative communities
– Highlight and build on examples of successful crowdsourcing at NASA
– Open up IT ports for utilizing collaborative tools on internal NASA networks
– Avoid over-defining the use of web tools through policy
Ensure support for widespread implementation of participatory exploration:
– Create a Participatory Exploration Group at NASA Headquarters
– Encourage relevant initiatives at the Center level
– Provide a budget to create the necessary infrastructure and community
Keith Cowing on January 7th, 2009
None of the authors of this document have actually engaged in participatory exploration. They just talk about it. That’s fine – yet they refrain from linking or mentioning those who actually do it.
How odd.
Oops, I just wrote some criticism. My mistake. Gen Y NASA folks do not like that. Too confrontational.
Erasure/non-posting expected.
Stay tuned. Participatory exploration will happen, none the less.
Eat our dust.
Marc Boucher on January 7th, 2009
There’s a lot of good ideas in your recommendations however tough it may be to implement considering the prevailing mindset at NASA. But the fact that this forum and document even exists is a step in the right direction.
As well creating open APIs for NASA data would be really useful. This would allow for innovative ideas and products to be generated that might otherwise not happen.
Tim Bailey on January 7th, 2009
“Provide a structure to train employees to interact with newly-contacted communities”
Brilliant! Getting people interested and talking is most useful when you can actually integrate the community into the project in some way. Even people experienced with blogging (and Twitter, Facebook, etc) can have difficulty translating those skills into ongoing participation by outside communities. Getting inside information out to the public is one thing, getting the ideas generated outside to flow back into NASA is quite another!
Kudos on recommending a way to make participatory exploration more than just a publicity gimmick. I look forward to hearing about the response from “senior management” at NASA!
beth on January 7th, 2009
Great report! ‘Hope we (NASA) will put all these recommendations in place.Our office supports and encourages innovative thinking, thanks to Bill Gerstenmaier. He challenges us to look for creative partnerships in non-traditional communities. Just to put on record, the HQ Space Operations Mission Directorate (Shuttle/Station/Space Comm programs) co-sponsored the original Participatory Exploration Summit with National Space Society and the HQ Innovative Partnership Office. We also funded CoLab during its first year before the Innovative Partnership Office took over full funding. We’re excited to see fresh new blood and fresh new ideas with the Gen Y crowd. Your voice deserves to be heard. We’re listening!
Brian Dunbar on January 7th, 2009
How do you want to leverage the ongoing web procurement? What do you want to see in it? Feel free to e-mail me. Given the SBU/procurement nature of it all, I can’t engage in a lot of dialogue now, but the draft RFP will be public before the final goes out.
Matt Everingham on January 7th, 2009
These are great recommendations. One benefit of these types of participatory capabilities, tools, and practices is that educators will be able to use them to teach science using data from current NASA missions. When students know they are using the same data that is used to do real science, their interest level is increased dramatically. This would have benefits to the public spanning far beyond the space program.
Keep up the good work!
Chris Harrison on January 7th, 2009
Great paper! There are some well-presented concepts and successful examples of participatory exploration which support the assertions made about the existing NASA culture.
That being said, I still believe there is a fundamental issue being overlooked this early in the “participatory exploration” movement: the ability to inspire future generations. What drew me to NASA was not the opportunity to build an avatar in Second Life and attend a CoLab meeting (although that is really cool). It was not the chance to scan thousands of satellite images in search of a new planet or star cluster. My love for NASA was two-fold, one aspect controlled by me and the other controlled by my educational environment.
First, my passion developed from looking up at the Moon and stars with my grandmother from a young age. During the summer, we would stay up late at night or wake early in the morning to see the constellations. It was like having a personal planetarium narrator throughout my youth.
The second aspect of my space education was the yearly trips taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Driving past T-38s and getting to view the massive Saturn V was (and still is) an amazing feeling. Synchronizing my watch with the atomic clock in the historic Apollo Mission Control Center was something my friends and I got excited about. Hearing from astronauts and mission personnel solidified my desire to work for NASA.
None of my influential childhood experiences had to do with the technical aspects of NASA. I had no desire to participate in open-source projects which might net me the chance to discover a new star. I simply knew that NASA was able to put human footprints on the Moon. I wanted to be a part of that. I still do.
Honestly, I think the average American shares the same desire. Although we are reaching the point where generations now entering the workforce will have grown up with technology in the cradle, the average U.S. taxpayer will not be courted to support NASA by being offered the opportunity to discover a star. In our day and age, taxpayers want results, not the opportunity to produce those results.
NASA is only going to ensure its survival when it figures out how to inspire its future workforce. We can develop an infinite number of websites and technical, participatory exploration programs without inspiring anyone. Perhaps current participation in such programs shows that?
Think back to your childhood and your first introduction to NASA. What was it that caught your attention and made you say, “I want to be a part of this one day?” That is what will inspire someone else. Although times have changed, people’s fascination with what we do has not. Young and old, alike, are still inspired by the chance to one day float in zero gravity.
To me, participatory exploration at this stage should be simple: go out and share your story with others. Spend time with the children who have not yet been told that budget constraints will force exploration of the solar system to be downsized. Spend time with the children who have not been told that their dream is not a reality.
As a friend of mine remarked recently, “An older person is harder to inspire. Living in this day and age is enough to depress anyone. However, children still walk around with a smile on their face, slaying invisible dragons and pretending to be an airplane while running around the yard. Figure out how to capture their imagination and NASA will never have a problem.”
What does that mean for participatory exploration? The possibilities are endless. I just think we are looking too far into technology to solve the basic problem of communication.
Erika Vick on January 7th, 2009
Chris makes many excellent points. One in particular that stands out for me with my NASA Speakers Bureau hat on is “go out and share your story.” I agree that the personal touch is key and tools such as OpenNASA, Second Life, Twitter, and Facebook help in real-time engagement. Addressing Brian’s invitation, I’d like to see an Agency capability to support webinars and related technology. There are a multitude of fascinating people and stories to be told but geographic barriers greatly restrict our accessibility that technology can remove.
metapsyche on January 7th, 2009
I like : “Create open APIs for NASA data” & “Highlight and build on examples of successful crowdsourcing at NASA”.
My other suggestions are data sharing & amateursourcing mentioned in this post:
http://exoplanetology.blogspot.....illed.html
Justin on January 8th, 2009
Mr. Cowing,
Once again, I must reply that we do accept criticism. We only insist that it be accurate.
Pages 4 and 5 list examples of successful participatory ventures both within and outside NASA (though the hyperlinks seem to have been lost in the conversion to PDF). The paper also explicitly references the NASA CoLab effort that several of the authors participated in.
Keith Cowing on January 8th, 2009
I said that you “refrain from linking” – and you just admitted that the links were not there. So where is the inaccuracy?
And I am not certain what Colab (which is being shut down because it did not accomplish what it was supposed to do) has ever done that has involved actual participatory exploration. Please tell me what they have done.
Alas, overt NASA participatory exploration has been done by NASA on Devon Island, at Spaceward Bound, at MDRS, in Antarctica, Svalbard, Axel Heiberg, etc. yet no mention is made (that I can find). There are those of us who actually go to these remote locations and connect with folks back home so as to have them interact with us, look over our shoulder, and participate in what we are doing. No mention of that.
And then you do mention spacehack.org in the paper – but they block people from following their Twitter feed. Not very “participatory”. Oops … the last time I posted comment about spacehack.org my posting as removed – never to be seen again.
P.S. I am going to be in need of some guest bloggers at NASA Watch soon. Are you interested?
Justin on January 8th, 2009
The inaccuracy was in your accusation that the paper didn’t mention those who do it and that none of the authors have actually done it. I think you over-reached there. What’s really going on here is that you think there was an oversight in not mentioning activities like those on Devon Island.
That’s fine, and I think that is a fair point. I think the Mars analogue excursions are an excellent example of participatory exploration. However, that is not the same thing as not giving credit to others at all, which is what you seemed to be insinuating.
I’ll let the authors who helped put CoLab together and that were directly involved in it speak for themselves on that matter. For example, the most recent posting on how to make participatory exploration happen addresses that issue better than I could.
Keith Cowing on January 8th, 2009
The sheer number of things that were omitted from this paper causes me to wonder whether the authors truly understand the scope and breadth of things NASA has been doing (for decades) which either already fit into “participatory exploration” or are ripe for modification such that they fit the bill. There is much more than Mars analogs being omitted. “Participatory exploration” may be a new buzzword but in many ways it describes things that NASA has been doing for quite some time. The Apollo 11 TV coverage stunned a number of people at the time – the thought that you could see it actually happening – live – brought people closer to space than had ever been the case before. It was like being there, you know “participating” …. Then again, none of you Gen Y folks were around then
Brian Shiro on January 9th, 2009
I haven’t read this report, but my suggestions regarding “participatory exploration” would include more than NASA’s adoption of open standards and Web 2.0 technologies (which are important). Participatory exploration should provide a means for people in geographically distinct locations to become a part of NASA. This could range from school children controlling a camera of a rover on Mars or engaging in a video chat with an astronaut on the ISS to scientists, engineers, and decision-makers using collaboration technologies to work better on NASA projects no matter where they are. I think the education and outreach angle of participatory education is obvious, but the professional collaboration dimension to it may be overlooked. Not only can this help to tear down the barriers and fiefdoms that exist among the NASA field centers, it could potentially open up the NASA workforce significantly to include people in industry, academia, other government agencies, other countries, etc. Maybe in the future, one won’t even have to relocate to a NASA center when accepting a job there. Instead, you can live almost anywhere and just connect with your colleagues virtually. This is “participatory exploration” to me – breaking down geographic barriers to inclusion in NASA projects, at any level of involvement.
Chris Harrison on January 10th, 2009
My earlier post spoke of participatory exploration in terms of communication and inspiration with the younger generations. Below is a link to one of the most successful, yet under-utilized programs in the “younger generations” category.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia.....dcast.html
I was first introduced to this podcast competition during the AIAA 2nd Space Exploration Conference in Houston, TX, in December 2006. It provides students in various age categories the opportunity to develop and submit an audio or video podcast related to NASA and its work. These entries were presented to the audience at the AIAA conference and winners were selected by these audience members.
That is where this event stopped. You could view some of the winners online, but only if you knew where to look to find the information. Since then, the website has been brought down and http://www.explorationpodcast.com no longer provides information about this competition or links to the past winners.
This competition was (I’m assuming it is no longer held) a perfect example of participatory exploration. It was students creating NASA podcasts for other students.
NASA asked the younger generation to participate and relate their knowledge of NASA’s mission to other students. Unfortunately, in my opinion, NASA did not hold up to its end of the bargain.
First, the Exploration Podcast webpage had a big disclaimer at the bottom of the page alienating NASA’s association with the competition. Why is the agency afraid to associate themselves with anything that may remotely resemble advertisement?
Second, there was no significant publicity or effort to distribute or display the resultant podcasts. When I e-mailed the organizers of this competition to ask about donating materials which could be used to mass distribute the podcasts to local schools, the answer was typical of many of NASA’s most phenomenal educational outreach programs:
“Even if we had CDs or other media which could be used to distribute the materials from this competition, we do not have the budget to pay someone to burn the CDs.”
So how could this play into participatory exploration? Simple. Examine the phenomenal programs that are already in place, evaluate their potential, eliminate the money pits, and invest the small amount of money necessary to distribute the free publicity that was generated by the age group NASA so desperately wants to reach.
Another great example of wasted publicity is the NASA Means Business competition. Some of the best, 30-second commercials in support of NASA go unseen each year as there is no centralized, easily accessible means of viewing these videos.
Once again, my point is simple. Examine the programs already in place before creating a slew of new programs with the explanation “NASA needs to reach out.” Chances are we might find that NASA is already reaching out, but pulling their hand away at the last second and saying “Psych!”.
Chris Harrison on January 10th, 2009
Although it’s already been identified that we need more participatory exploration, here are a few videos prepared for the 2nd Space Exploration Conference in 2006 that highlight the lack of knowledge about NASA and space in general. It is a 4-part series, so make sure to check out the other segments on YouTube. Simply search “Spacewalking Episode 1 of 4″ on YouTube if this link does not work for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxXroUTAdQA
Michael Mealling on January 10th, 2009
Erika’s comment above made me realize the hole in that report that was bugging me. ““go out and share your story.” is perfect for someone involved with a speaker’s bureau but on thing that’s really missing is “listen to others sharing their stories”.
The paper is very focused on NASA allowing public participation in its programs (which I greatly applaud and support) which is fine. But I’d love to see some verbage about NASA participation going the other way: make it easier for NASA employees and projects to participate in activities organized and run by others (be they individuals or organizations). I think that might help mitigate any Not Invented Here syndrome as well.
IPP had (has?) a program last year where NASA employees could participate in “externships” with other organizations for up to a year. That way the organization could benefit from NASA’s perspective but NASA gets to learn new ways of doing things. That’s a little “heavy” for what you’re talking about in that paper but it does get NASA out and into other people’s projects.
Sascha Tietz on January 26th, 2009
First of all, thanks to all authors for putting this list of recommendations together. It is definitely a good starting point for discussions and the exchange of ideas. From my perspective there appears to be a lot of confusion regarding the term “participatory exploration”, because different people have different expectations related to participatory exploration.
For some people it appears to be not much more than a buzzword for public outreach, where the general public is just informed about what NASA is doing, why it’s doing this, and how it’s done. This can be done using a website, Twitter, or Facebook. Although these tools have been called a “digital tool for collaboration” in the paper, the information flow on Facebook, Twitter, and so on is usually restricted to one direction and the chances of obtaining feedback from the public are limited (e.g., direct messages, comments). That’s a first step, but from my point of view, participatory is more than just reading about NASA, it is the chance to be part of it. For the same reason projects like SETI@Home, Folding@Home, and Stardust@Home have to be excluded as well, because they are only using my personal (= time) or computational resources, without allowing a direct interaction between the public and the people running SETI or Stardust.
But how do give people the chance to be part of NASA? This is a really tough question considering the generation “25 years and older”, also referred as taxpayers. For those people participatory exploration may really mean to just give them something, they are proud of paying for? Firstly, this requires for NASA to be in the newspapers not just with budget overruns or project delays, but with good news for a change. Secondly there are surely more possibilities, but my interest is participatory exploration for younger people.
Considering the generation “25 years and younger”, participatory exploration is – or better should be – part of education. I am totally agreeing with Chris’ post on how we got (and could get) young children inspired. Honestly, just show them the Moon and tell them that NASA had people walking up there! Show them rockets, airplanes, and all the fun stuff. Unfortunately NASA seems to loose touch with many of those children – being the future workforce – once they get older. And NASA supports that drift by only spending a very small amount of its education budget on projects with students in their late high school years or at universities. This from my point of view is strange, considering the vast amount of possibilities for actual participatory exploration at this point. One of those possibilities is the American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO) concept (http://asmo.arc.nasa.gov), where students from allover the U.S. are supposed to design, built, test, launch, and operate their own spacecraft around the Moon. This means they really are an actual part of the exploration program, not just the audience for it. And maybe inspiring their children and supporting STEM education is considered “worth it” by the taxpayers as well.
P.S. Other federal agencies are already demonstrating the capabilities of participatory exploration with students (e.g., University Nanosat Program of the US Air Force (http://www.vs.afrl.af.mil/UNP/), Cubesat program of the National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08549/nsf08549.htm)).