Today's Ask the Administrator Answer

Editor’s note: The following selection is repeated – verbatim – from an ongoing “Ask the Administrator” dialog with Mike Griffin, located on InsideNASA, and can be viewed by anyone at NASA:

Question(s): Why don’t I know my counterparts in other centers, or at least have a link to a brief summary of their areas of expertise and their contact info? Why don’t I know who else has bought, say latch valves or thrusters? Why don’t I know what software they use at Glenn or JPL to do their dynamic interaction analysis? Why can’t I read the design documents for other propulsion systems designed by or for NASA if I wanted to? I think we need a internal NASA wide website for trading analyses, contact points, analyses tools, vendor experiences, test results etc… I envision a “myspace” of NASA.

Ideally we could even swap test equip within each center and find people with availible time to help on IRAD’s and such on a “craigslist” of nasa. The key to sucess is that any such tool would NOT be mandiatory. if it were used, great, and if not, no major loss. These things suceeded in the non-work world by word of mouth. The last thing we need is another “one NASA” requirement. From:Rebecca Gillespie,Goddard Space Flight Center

Response (on 06-Apr-2007): Your ideas are good ones in the large, though individual details may need to be adjusted. I dont need you to expound on them; I need you to convey them to the new NASA Chief Information Officer, Jonathon Pettus, making sure to keep your Center CIO also informed.