Sloppy NASA IT: Someone Needs To Update NED (update)

NED doesn't work. I've had the wrong address listed in that system for over two years, put in numerous requests to get it fixed, and still it's wrong. Part of the problem is they want you to use the self service system to make any changes, which is near impossible when you no longer have access to the deactivated e-mail account that NED is pointed towards.

And someone suggested making NASA a government wide IT hub? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Editor's note: yes, it was me. Having second thoughts now ;-)

NASA needs to fix this.

All retires are currently listed in NED including some colleagues who retired and are currently contractors. NASA will not allow them access to their now defunct NASA email, nor will NASA list their current contractor email. What a mess for these people. Getting emails sent to a dead account; and refusal to list in NED a valid email. Guess that is the new way to reduce email traffic! ;-)

Sounds like someone has been asleep at the deprovisioning switch. Or more likely any formal process for separation from NASA simply overlooked NED.

I would not like to be the person who has to bring the database into alignment with reality.

Not to mention issues of National Security ! I have no doubt that the Chinese, Indians, Israelis, etc. would love to hack into what sounds like a very sloppy IT infrastructure. The Chinese in particular have been aggressive in hovering up what they can from our military, and NASA certainly is a fund of very important rocketry and technology knowledge.

Editor's note: I worked at the Space Station Freedom Program Office in the early 1990's when Russia's participation was proposed. We heard the same complaints about them.

I couldn't resist - left NASA five years ago and I'm still in there!

Editor's note: Think of all the annual leave you might be accumulating!

Try your fave astronaut. John W. Young is in there, so is Buzz Aldrin

Why is this a problem, especially at 1:39 PM on a nice lazy summer Sunday afternoon ? So some people who are no longer with the agency are still listed in an informational directory. Big deal ! Some days I think NASAWatch would argue with a billboard.

Charlie Duke, Harrison Schmitt, Mike Foale, and Gene Cernan's phone number

Quote > Why is this a problem?
Answer: Because some of my ex colleagues who are now contractors are being criticized by their NASA "customers" for not being responsive, because their NASA "customers" are sending emails to their NED listed but dead and unaddressable email account.
I have tried to help them to no avail. As others have stated above, NO one will fix the problem in NED of retired government but now re-employed as contractor employees having dead, listed email addresses. When I tried to help them I was rebuked with, "It is HQ policy to keep personnel listed in NED for archival reasons. ...please move along, this is not your concern."

Ha! You used MSFC and competency in the same sentence.

I was listed in NED twice, each for a different NASA center - one of which I've never worked at.

Both entries had partially correct information, but neither was complete. Took 2 months and numerous phone calls & emails to get it fixed.

I smirked at Antares's comment, but there are some really good IT people at Marshall. I think, though, that their management's reach exceeded their grasp. One "competency" might fit within the talent pool in the Huntsville area, but it's just wishful thinking to assume that Marshall and UAH can hire an arbitrary number of IT professionals and have them all be good. Ames (at least in a down economy when the competition with Silicon Valley its a little less stiff), Goddard, and JSC have major metropolitan areas with strong IT communities. MSFC doesn't have that big a pool.

Moral: maybe some NASA Centers' management should think harder before just going for any business they can get, or that their members of Congress care to steer their way, and actually look at the local, er, competency pool.

Heh, Lisa Nowak & Bill Oefelein still there too.

De-provisioning what de-provisioning? This was not an initial design requirement and will be fixed in the next year or so.

Folks the NED and other agency systems are not at fault its the folks that make business decisions - so please don't blame a system because the management doesn't understand IT and therefore makes wrong decisions.

If people with the correct skills and the ability to make decisions where placed in charge i.e. contractors mostly then the problems could be fixed within weeks.

So this is why needs all of the massive computers? I guess the are qualified to test "cloud" computing. Sound like there IT support has their heads in the clouds.

hahaha I put in Al Bean my favorite Apollo astronaut and low and behold there he was

ON A SIDE NOTE : my username have my URL on youtube where I found modular equipment carrier tracks in the Apollo 14 images from lroc the nasa team didnt see.

Hmmm....is this supposed to be wide open access? I was able to access via a standard internet connection. I would have thought this was an internal FOUO-type link.....

Hey Keith!

I'm still in there, too! Woohoo! I think I know who put in the work order to erase the people who aren't there any more. It's the same gal who takes care of my cats when I go on travel. :-D

Well I am glad that "someone"@NASA.gov reads NASA watch, and that was the reason I posted my concern twice. It is interesting that the celebrity ex-employees have been removed, but my retired colleagues are SADLY still listed with dead email addresses and telephone numbers. Perhaps we can spur NASA IT to some MORE effective corrective action in this area?

Your tax dollars at work! If you think they can screw up something as simple as email - what do you think they are doing to REAL SCIENCE and technology?
They made a pact with the devil and that is all there is too it

I want to know if I really can phone up Buzz Aldrin, John Young and Charlie Duke. I love the idea of a phone ringing forever unanswered somewhere in Houston

> Either that or NASA really has no idea who actually works for the agency at any given moment.

Unfortunately, unless NASA HR has a different org chart system, this does mean NASA doesn't know who works for NASA at any given time... How would they when their system for knowing doesn't know?

"unless NASA HR has a different org chart system, "

Of course they have a different system. You'd hardly implement an outward facing directory system with direct access to a database that inevitably contains sensitive information (SSN? Salary history, etc.). No large organization would do it like that.

No, you have two or more databases, and you periodically sweep one for updates to the other. Phone books (which is what NED essentially is) are pretty low on the critical resource list. Compare this update/error rate to what it was when they were printed on paper once a year.

Realistically, coming up with a good enterprise architecture for managing the disparate sorts of data is a pretty challenging task, especially when you are slowly evolving from a lot of other legacy systems, many of which depend on peculiarities of how it used to be done. JPL changed employee numbers about 5-6 years ago, and it took quite a while (years) for all the obscure systems that tracked things by number to be found. Especially in a technology organization like NASA, there tend to be a lot of idiosyncratic homegrown applications that are infrequently used by very small number of people.

Keith:
I had 45 years with ABMA and NASA MSFC and I am not in the NED as it is called. Iam still kicking at 80. I wish there was a listing of the NASA and Contractors people somewhere with a listing of the Colleges that they were graduated from before they began working in the Space program.

I'd fire half of NASA dead weight across the board, and terminate a few programs. And close down a few NASA centers. Including the STS stack army. And give ATK a month off, while serious folks discuss serious things.

Without doing that you are not going anywhere Moon, Mars, or Alpha Centaur

The senators/presidents/congressmen would have to suck it up and take it on their collective chins.

Pity we have no one with the big enough balls to take them on.

I don't give a f'k about their budget appropriation clout, they would not do it for a focused space program, but do it for spread out job programs.

It was once known that some of the reasons for abandoning X.500 in favor of NED was "there are dead people, separated people, and retirees in X.500." X.500 is an old, outdated technology. OK.

So let's move to NED, something new(er). Now there are people who are dead, separated, and retirees in NED.

There was nothing wrong with X.500.

The reason you had dead, separated, and retired people in X.500 is because there was no cohesive, simple process to keep the system updated.

So let's spend God-only-knows how much to not fix the root of the problem (getting the easy, sane process in place). But instead, putting in a new system, tied to the same inefficient, or worse, processes, which are now yielding the exact same flawed results.

Wasn't it obvious that it was a process problem, and not a technology problem, in keeping X.500 current?

NASA should not be allowed to automate or implement any IT improvements without addressing the underlying process, sustainability, and general saneness of those so-called improvements prior to making any commitments/spending to implement such changes.

Seems that you may have exposed an issue with this process?

http://fcw.com/articles/2009/07/27/feat-deprovisioning-departing-employees.aspx?sc_lang=en