NASA Chief Technology Officer for IT

About NASA Chief Technology Officer for IT

The Chief Technology Officer for IT serves as NASA’s principal adviser and advocate on matters concerning its IT roadmap, agency-wide IT technology innovation, enterprise architecture, and open government.

IT Technology Innovation

The CTO for IT Office is responsible for evaluating new and emerging technologies for possible integration into NASA’s IT environment, providing both logistical and financial support to a variety of center-incubated IT projects, as well as initiates and directs highly-disruptive IT pilot projects across the agency. These pilots are crosscutting and/or game-changing, enabling currently unrealizable approaches to IT. To accomplish this, the Office of the CTO for IT also pioneers new models for technology partnerships and collaborative R&D efforts for IT.

Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture is a fundamental, cross-cutting management discipline used to enable integrated strategic planning. Enterprise Architecture is a key component of improved IT management and planning, designed to optimize the NASA mission. Within the CTO-IT Program, the EA Program exists to build, implement and measure the performance of the NASA Enterprise Architecture. The EA program evaluates case studies from IT Labs on the basis of applicability and feasibility for integration into the existing NASA portfolio, with the aim to achieve maximum progress toward a strategic target state while minimizing mission risk and reducing cost.

Open Government

NASA’s Open Government Office is responsible for directing the agency’s Open Government Plan, with aggressive goals to release more high value data sets online, push forward the use of Open Source technologies at NASA and actively create participatory opportunities to engage citizens in NASA’s mission. The Open Government is the primary vehicle for promoting transparency, participation and collaboration across the agency and fostering a culture of experimentation and fearlessness.

Government in Beta

The CTO for IT Office is a dynamic test-bed for new workplace paradigms brought about by the use of emerging IT technology. By performing hands-on evaluations of new IT products and services, the CTO for IT team can evaluate the total impact an experimental technology will have on individuals and project teams. Tactical experimentation and exploration of new technologies also provides insight into how easily it can be integrated, given NASA’s legacy IT environment and the existing policy framework.