NASA Web Strategy: Dazed and Confused (Update)
NASA JSC PAO Internal Memo: Space Station Live Placed on Hiatus
“However, in order to have the time to ensure that our products align to our ERO BHAG and align with the desires of our partners, we can’t just keep piling on additional work. To that end, after extensive discussions, we’re placing Space Station Live on hiatus at the end of the week. And, we’re working with the ISS Program to consider other things as well – using a new, regular meeting where leaders from ERO and ISS share updates and collaborate together. For example, we’d use this forum to discuss a pilot effort where we support uncrewed vehicle launches, dockings and undockings differently–perhaps providing commentary only through social media.”
Keith’s update: I just got a call from NASA JSC PAO to clarify things. They are not looking to shut down the ISS live App or website – (the email was a little confusing) rather they are looking to halt the creation of an hour long daily update about ISS events and the weekly posting of a summary thereof. I asked if they had metrics on what their viewership/readership was and they said that they were not allowed to track such information. This is odd given how much NASA just loves to crow about the number of people who visit their websites. No attempt has been – or apparently will be – made to ask users/viewers of these discontinued features as to whether they like things, if things can be improved – and how. Rather, they will just shut things off and see who (if anyone) complains. As for the use of the word “partners” JSC PAO tells me that this refers to internal partners at JSC.
To be certain, it is good that NASA periodically revisits the things that it does – especially when funds are tight – to see if they are offering the best value to their audience based on their needs and interests. I am just baffled as to why NASA spends so little time actually talking to – or consulting with – actual audience members before they make these decisions. Charlie Bolden loves to babble on about “metrics” when it comes to how he makes decisions about NASA education programs. But in reality NASA has very few audience metrics when it comes to its overall education and public outreach. And when they do have metrics, they just ignore them or bungle their interpretation of what the metrics are saying.
As for my rant about JPL’s three websites for MSL. I still think that such efforts are wasteful. Back to my vacation.
Keith’s Note: There is no other website like this at NASA – so they shut it down so as to “align with the desires of our partners”? I’m sorry, but who cares what ESA, NASDA, et al think about a nasa.gov website for a program disproportionately funded by the U.S.? While making a decision to go from 1 website to zero websites in this case, NASA still funds 3 websites for MSL [1, 2, 3]. Go Figure.
There is no agencywide strategic thought in evidence whatsoever when it comes to PAO, outreach, or web presence. Everyone does whatever they want – all while Charlie Bolden hasn’t the time to bring order to this chaos because that might upset people. As for the NASA Advisory Council subcommittee chartered to advise on this topic? Yawn. Let me know when they actually do something.
– Space Station Live
– NASA Advisory Council Education and Public Outreach Committee Meeting
NASA has been spending exorbitently since the beginning of the program to send a media team to cover launches and landings of Soyuz and other vehicles. Maybe after 15 years of program operations they’ve decided that they ought to let Russians cover Russian mission operations, ESA cover European, JAXA cover Japanese, etc.? That part sounds good. (Very few people watch these things anyway-they’d be watching if there were a serious accident in which someone got hurt) That said NASA really needs to figure out what it is they want to communicate and how best to communicate it. I don’t think the people in charge have a clue-haven’t had a clue since about 40 years ago.
I suppose the fact that NASA’s finest now commute to and from orbit aboard Soyuz played a factor in the extensive online/TV coverage. I do agree that NASA needs to articulate its mission statement clearer (Charlie’s input would be helpful too). However, being out of sight and out of mind may not be the wisest move. Perhaps NASA PAO can borrow Buckingham Palace’s strategy of placing a noticeboard outside JSC whenever a Soyuz launches, docks and lands as well as Progress, ATV HTV, Dragon or Cygnus? “To whom it may concern…”
NASA has been covering the Baikonur launches since the beginning 15 years ago-it had nothing to do with commuting by Soyuz in the last couple of years. And no one said out of sight out of mind. Its supposed to be an international partnership. Why does NASA have to do the other agency’s work for them? Its not like NASA is the only agency with public affairs people or TV cameras or web links. And NASA is not the only one benefiting when the others cover their own launches and missions. If its supposed to be a partnership, let some of the other partners contribute. Conserve some of NASAs money and refocus it where it would be more valuable.
Was there an agreement long ago that NASA would provide exclusive coverage for partner nations? Then again, Roscosmos has its own website and TV channel as I’m sure so do CSA, ESA and JAXA. But it would surely be lost in translation for domestic U.S. audiences. Ergo, my point about ISS being out of sight and mind. Seems the only mass media coverage ISS generated lately was the Italian spacewalker smothered by water! Other than that, most people in America still don’t know what happens on board or how diverse the space station is.
Well, if they’ve been doing the same thing for 15 years and it hasn’t worked and no one knows about ISS, then you might think they would try to do things differently…right…or do we just take it for granted that what NASA is doing is right, and its simply the stupidity of the American people that means they never figure it out? Of course if they want more money, and all I ever hear from NASA people is how they need a lot more money, (nevermind that they get more than any other space agency-in fact I’ve heard they get more than allthe otherscombined) then maybe they need to be more effective with their communications. So far they are a dismal failure. now why is that? Maybe they should do it the same way one more time?
I think you’re overlooking something basic. Most of the other countries in question do not have English as their primaty language, and Americans typically do not speak anything but English. So, even if every space agency on the planet did it’s own coverage. almost none of them would be of any use to an American audience. If we want to see an event in English, then NASA has to cover it. England and Canada, the other English-speaking countries, have minimal space budgets and can’t do any more than they do, and to see their coverage Americans would have to either have access to foreign TV channels or go to English and Canadian web sites. Actually, if you’re willing to search a bit, the ESA web site does cover a lot of events with English-language web pages.
They have people called interpreters. NASA has huge contracts for interpreter services. You dont have to send a half dozen people to Kazakstan to cover a launch or a landing; instead you use the Russian provided video, provide an interpreter to repeat in English what the Russian broadcaster is saying in Russian. You pay one interpreter to sit in mission control in houston for a few hours and pay them a couple hundred dollars instead of six people x airfare, hotels, hazardous duty pay…probably comes to $50000 a two week trip.
Actually most of the world space agencies do use a lot of English and do provide English language web pages, so you don’t win this argument.
This is just a shot in the dark on my part, but given the amount of NASA web site “dysfunction” and how long it’s been going on, I have to wonder if the various web masters and their teams and contributors have ever had it spelled out for them who exactly their boss is (or respective bosses are).
I see two possibilities that might exist — either they each have no clearly specified boss, which helps explain the free-form inconsistencies, or some of them may have more than one boss, which never works out for any job function.
Instead of pointing to the web site workers and the senior management, perhaps the culprit(s) we seek are somewhere in between the two.
I managed both the NASA Homepage and HQ’s Human Spaceflight web pages then served as a civil servant CIO for Human Spaceflight.
There is no simple answer to this question.
NASA’s websites were in the main started by technical people who just stood up pages on their desktop or office/lab servers.
By 2000-2007 when I served we had thousands of sites distributed across all of the agency’s centers, directorates, programs, projects, and PAO organizations.
After Sean O’Keefe’s, (perhaps an NASA urban legend) , conversation with Tom Cruise, about his son’s disdain for the NASA homepage HQ PAO was well funded to redesign the page and service and was given “authority” to corral agency site to follow HQ’s look and feel. Pat Dunnington, then Agency CIO, was given authority to simplify and consolidate the Agency’s web presence.
That went well………
So the short answer to the question is there is no single organization at NASA with authority over the webpresence. Same as its always been.
Good history of how it got so convoluted. The problem is not that the stuff is all over and created by thousands, the problem is there is not a logical map, index, guide, structure to how things are linked. No logical entry point.
NASA does itself a great disservice by not coming to grips with this. When there is so much stuff that is so disorganized and it just keeps growing, then to the likely outside potential user, it just looks like a lot of noise. Not only is additional value to the taxpayer not being created, whatever is being created just gets lost.
From my knot hole it appears that public media people run the ‘system’. To most of the media getting a story out, regardless of form and location, seems to be their goal. No organization needed. They only live in the present anyway.
I know that in the area of social media they have had a campaign for a couple years to get volunteers whose goals are to line up tens of thousands of people on their distributions and use Facebook, Twitter, etc to distribute ‘stuff’ of interest. I am on at least one or two of these people’s lists. First, from the comments they get back it appears most of the people they are sending to are foreign nationals. Second, they distribute a lot of NASA stuff, some of it is interesting, but they also distribute lots of other stuff-pretty pictures, latest big news items, other organization’s stuff, lots of things that have nothing to do with NASA. I regard 90% of it as clutter and of no redeeming value. Occasionally they send me something I might not otherwise have found.
It would be great if I could find what I want when I want it and if I knew there was some sort of a logical structure I could go to to peruse in case I did not know what kinds of things I was looking for. But the NASA system is useless. I have better luck going to Google, or to something like Astronautica, Lunar Surface Journal, etc.
The lack of data on site usage is possibly a by-product of federal rules on web statistics collection. IIRC, if they collect data much beyond raw page hits, they have to disclose what they are collecting, what it will be used for, and get explicit approval. Maybe they should ask the NSA for more detailed info. 🙂
I would tend to agree except, as I noted, when it comes time to brag about web traffic NASA suddenly has web statistics that it can quote. They can’t have it both ways.
It’s very easy to collect summary data, such as total number of visits, number of unique visitors, page views, etc., that does not contain personally identifying information.
I totally agree. The data is not the issue – rather, it is NASA’s lack of interest in being accountable that is.