NASA being employed to ferry information securely between systems in a cloud network and to improve astronaut communication using natural language processing ( NLP ).
“ We ’ re setting up our data-driven decision lens on how we visualise our data across NASA . That ’ s true for mission data . That ’ s true for back office data . That ’ s true for HR data . We ’ re setting up that visualisation platform that is a consistent look and feel but it also links into our data sources on the back end consistently through APIs .”
There ’ s also an enterprise data platform with an analytics capability to deliver “ powerdriven data decision making ” enhancing veracity , quality and consistency . This platform also holds the key to partnership collaboration with digitally native communication being a core goal , including virtual and augmented reality solutions for engineering projects .
“ That ,” says Thompson , “ is a real advantage of NASA because we ’ re very collaborative .
I like to describe it as a guild . We have multiple guilds through the organisation coming together and working on solving a specific problem . We call it ‘ swarm innovation ’ – it ’ s what we ’ re using to bring communities together , to share and advance their work in an agency-wide perspective .”
It sounds impressive , but these high-value projects represent just six months or so of launches . Thompson estimates that there are around 35 more for next year , bridging process transformation , AI / ML and data collaboration . “ We ’ re not doing digital for digital ’ s sake – we ’ re actually taking a look at our business model and how NASA operates and impacting mission value .”
The end goal ? “ What we ’ re gravitating towards is improving our pace of delivery ,” says Thompson . “ If you look at pace of delivery for launches , pace of delivery for robotic missions , pace of delivery for science and research studying climate ,
“Digital transformation is unlocking the door for a massive future ”
RON THOMPSON CDO , NASA aimagazine . com 33