There's No One Home at innovate.nasa.gov
Keith’s 30 Oct 4:52 pm note: What is innovate.nasa.gov? It claims to be “a collaboration platform to foster open discussion about technology across NASA and its external innovation community. This is the place for you to rethink and reinvent existing research, learn about NASA technology, and shape the conversation about future NASA innovation. We post information about NASA’s inventions and technology focus areas. You join other technology experts, researchers, and innovators in conversation about this NASA technology. We challenge you to think about new ways to use NASA inventions, share a new perspective to encourage innovation, and inspire new ideas.”
But in order to see what they do you have to login by giving them access to your Twitter account. If you create a new user account you are asked to add a picture of yourself and provide other social media account information. If you are under 13 you are told to get your parent’s permission. Once you get in – well, no one is there. If you go to “The Buzz” touted as a “real time news feed” other than “njaiuto” and “colin_graham” who visited last year (apparently) no one is home. Yet someone regularly operates their Twitter account @InnovateDotNASA. They have an up to date Facebook page too.
None of the usual (and required) responsible official or contact names are included on this website. No mention is made of this site from any NASA technology websites at NASA HQ. The site says “Innovate.NASA is the web-based component of NASA’s Innovation Ecosystem–an agency-wide initiative to foster technology innovation.” The NASA Innovation Ecosystem page explains little about itself and seems to be a year out of date. It refers to “(In)novation Partners” except there are none. When you go to the contact us link you get “access denied”. And so on.
The Innovation Ecosystem page is run by NASA CIO so maybe they are responsible for innovate.nasa.gov. But what is this website supposed to do if no one visits it? Why is this information hidden behind a firewall that requires usernames and logins? How much did it cost to create – and now – how much does it cost to maintain this NASA website – that no one uses?
Keith’s 30 Oct 9:42 pm update: Several readers have noticed that the site’s firewall/login has been lowered. Gee, what a coincidence. Isn’t it pathetic that NASA spent all this money on this site and then let it sit dormant — and only when they got caught with their pants down did they start to get active. Makes you wonder if this site is even needed given that no one noticed it until I posted some snarky observations.
Keith’s 2 Nov update: The website now has this message: “Our site is currently under construction, but we will be re-launching soon. Stay tuned…” Despite repeated requests, the NASA CIO has refused to respond to all inquiries about this website. I guess its FOIA time.
.@InnovateDotNASA Odd how you let your website gather dust for more than a year and only start to fix it after @NASAWatch says something
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 31, 2013
Why the h____ do I need to have a Twitter account to use a government site?
Baffling. Not even sure what they are protecting since only one guy has posted anything on it – a year ago.
I think I griped too soon. I followed the ‘create new account’ link you offered and it looks like one can register with an email address. I didn’t sign up since, as you say, the site isn’t active and I hate the term ‘ecosystem’ when it is a management buzzword.
Signing in with Twitter there looks similar to signing in via FB/Twitter/whatnot to comment here vs. signing up separately with Disqus.
Ok, I was going to say it’s really strange to require a Twitter account and an email since almost everything lets you register with email and not many people have Twitter accounts relatively.
No one seems to know who the audience is for this website or what it does.
Here’s one possibility: Some midlevel executive/manager gets buttonholed by a consolutant, reads an inflight magazine, or trade pub article on this hip new thing that’s so popular with the young people and S/he gets some seed funding for an ‘initiative’ to implement something similar to leverage the power of this hip new thing. A higher level ‘champion’ endorses it. Careerists glom onto it, working groups and steering committees come about. Surveys are conducted, stakeholders are consulted, a strategy is crafted with milestones and inchstones to exploit the power of the hip new thing. Focus groups test vaguely structured user interfaces. Those who call it b.s. are ignored or told to be quiet. A rollout is planned for some date, coding begins, the careerists spin the non-accomplishments into their performance appraisals, claim future results, and get their brownie points. Rollout comes nearer, coding proceeds, the champions and careerists are off to the next thing. No money was planned for testing, refinement, and assessment so there isn’t any. Some half-baked site gets put up, there is an article in the house organ about the dedicated team empowering the workplace with newprocessesandtools(tm). End-of-year budget crunches happen, someone looks around and finds that this project is all duplicative and rudderless. It will therefore be called synergistic with existing strategic initiatives (nobody fails), consolidated with something equally pointless, and forgotten. Nobody takes down the site because nobody knew it was turned on in the first place.
Well, this one guy I know said it happened like that at a place he worked at. Repeatedly.
You got their attention, Keith. There is content on the site and access seems to be open, at least to some extent. Perhaps they had messed up access permissions. What is it with government web sites these days?
(sigh) Isn’t it pathetic that they spend all this money on things like this and then let them sit dormant — and only when they get caught with their pants down do they start to get active. Makes you wonder if this site is even needed given that no one noticed it until I posted some snarky observations.
Curious; The video on their home page talks about “invention and innovation,” but when they show a “microprocessor” it’s an Intel 4004, the very first microprocessor ever developed, introduced 40+ years ago. You can’t even buy one now, let alone imagine a reason to use one.
This video, like the web site, seems completely pointless, put together by someone apparently with no idea of what they were trying to accomplish. It’s no wonder no one has visited it.