Obama Policies on Transparency, Openness, and Participation - and NASA

Hey

You want to talk about it, lets talk about it.

You have no business looking under the hood, OK we delete your car.

Happy Happy.

This could help force NASA leaders and programs to have more accountability for their actions. Right now they hide behind a shield that growth is only when NASA commits to Congress which the agency was able to finagle PDR as the milestone to be measured against for performance metrics.

The leaders and programs either allow ridiculous optimism through the AO selection/directed mission process or they force the new missions into an unrealistic yearly funding budget.

It's too hard to tell if this executive order will help but if it does, I hope they will focus on NASAs cost problems that are in the agency's control.

Remember Alan Stern presented the ~$5B growth between three fiscal years(I may be a bill off the number) and when Ed took over he totally discounted it saying it was something FAR less because he only cares what he is legally accountable for which is PDR.

Now I'm sure there will be a lot of comments on engineering, requirements and definitions aren't quite there to do an accurate estimate early on and you can pick your side on this but I think both sides of the coin agree there ARE ways that NASA can reduce growth that is caused internally to the agency.

Bottom line:
Growth is expected but how much is acceptable before measures are implemented to help curve

I guess this means we finally have to release all those UFO photos and artifacts we brought back from the Moon. At least, that's what the UFO buffs are crowing. Anybody think this is funny?

How should it impact NASA? After the VSE was announced, OCE funded a 7-month study (Jan - June 2005) with Aerospace, led by NASA IPAO. Study was to assess human rating of EELV's.

During the summer of 2005, Griffin initiated the ESAS. We know the results of ESAS. Where are the results of Aerospace study? Can someone do a FOIA on this work? People at MSFC have told me over drinks that this study concluded that EELV are human ratable but they were going to do what Griffin wanted. Let see if NASA redacts this study.

I bet it won't mean HQ is any less paranoid about people talking to NASA Watch. But it should mean that more things are open for the public to see. That NASA employees and contractors can express opinions and participate in social media without fear of negative reactions from management. That NASA public affairs and the portal move in the direction of more openness and less control and restriction. NASA should be involved in lively public discussion rather than worrying about being letter perfect and authoritative.

How will this effect NASA? The same as it will affect all executive branch agencies - in policy. However, how will staffing and budget be affected, I didn’t hear any dollars being attached to his action. FOIA is an unfunded mandate; it’s at the discretion of the agency how much or how little to fund this program. Making sure the manpower is available to process public requests in accordance with the FOIA, EO13392, and the Open Government Act is more concerning to the executive branch agencies then how to move forward on the President’s new memo. No doubt that the Department of Justice will provide more guidance in the near future in regards to his memo. Remember, it’s the new administration's views and speaking on FOIA on his first full day in office should say enough.
FOIA is still a federal law which mandates the process of providing the public agency records. There are still required protections under this law, nine exemptions...and all agencies will be required to process their records under Title 5, United States Code, 552 (FOIA) and 552a (Privacy Act) as usual.
I do believe our executive branch agencies will become more deliberate when making discretionary releases to the public.

What about the positive benefits. Air everything out. Make the engineers and scientists expose everything. Of course ITAR has to be considered but let's have a NASA facebook or myspace.

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090123_4276.php

Save Trees, Respond Digitally to FOIAs

That's the essence of a phrase buried deep down in President Barack Obama's memo to agencies that calls for a new openness in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the public.

The memo says all federal agencies should "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure" and then adds: "The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their government." (Emphasis added.)

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive at The George Washington University, a nonprofit that files and litigates FOIA requests better than any outfit in Washington, said he believes the technology phrase is a call by the tech-savvy Obama administration for agencies to use the Web, including social network sites, to push out FOIA information to the public.

Blanton said a good model for this is how NASA managed the mountain of FOIA requests it received following the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. NASA decided to handle the requests by putting up every piece of information it had on the investigation on the Web.

Blanton suggested that anyone filling a FOIA from now on invoke the Obama memo, which I intend to do when I start filing requests for the thousands of task orders on the megabillion-dollar Defense Information Systems Agency Encore I and Encore II contracts. DISA dropped a blanket over those task orders three years ago because, theoretically, some contained "sensitive" information.

But, as Obama said, "A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency," a phrase I believe applies to DISA task order contracts.

Always good to mention DISA in this column.

How SHOULD it affect NASA?

Maybe this statement should promote a change to the current policy banning NASA participation in "conferences", provided those conferences have an "openness" to them via modern technology, thereby allowing public involvement (and scrutiny)? Just a thought.

Whooo....Whoooo....

No more Export Compliance and oversite on NASA STI publication.

Heck, we are already doing the minimal amount of professional peer review, if any in some cases, so why not just give everything away?