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Knowledge 2020 Meeting Overview

David Meza, Chief Knowledge Architect, NASA JSC, discusses Searching Our Critical Data. There were over 45 participants and speakers who attended to discuss the state of Knowledge Management (KM) and how NASA moves into the future leveraging this critical discipline.

Photo Credit: NASA

The NASA knowledge community continues to build on the foundation of other K2020s.

The Knowledge 2020 and NASA quarterly Knowledge Community face-to-face meeting were hosted at the Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) organization facility in Fairmont, West Virginia from Tuesday May 17 through Thursday May 19, 2016. There were over 45 participants and speakers who attended to discuss the state of Knowledge Management (KM) and how NASA moves into the future leveraging this critical discipline.

The objectives of Knowledge 2020 and the community meeting were as follows:

  • To actively engage speakers and participants in problem solving and innovation to enhance sharing of NASA’s critical lessons and that learning takes place consistently across the agency.
  • To focus on new ideas and provoke thinking about solving NASA’s big challenges.
  • To provide a forum for benchmarking and innovative solutions that can be applied to an integrated systematic approach for critical learning priorities.
  • To build networks that enhance the sharing of knowledge strategies and exchange best practices.
  • To create an environment of learning and reflection.

Opening Remarks and Guest Presentations

Dr. Ed Hoffman opened the meeting and provided the latest elements of the NASA Knowledge Strategy.  The momentum built by the NASA Knowledge Community is tremendous and has been noticed by Agency Senior Management, in particular the Agency Critical Knowledge and Referee Process, an iterative knowledge requirements interview conducted semi-annually and briefed to NASA senior managers. Dr. Hoffman also noted that NASA continues to be fortunate in these meetings to host a great line-up of external speakers such as Dr. Gregory Schaefer, West Virginia University School of Medicine Assistant Professor of Surgery and Mark Tomczak, Software Engineer at Google.

Dr. Schaefer of the West Virginia University School of Medicine presented the topic of “Miscommunication in the Mass Communication Age” that revealed many parallels in the communication challenges for West Virginia University Hospital and those experienced at NASA, in particular examples that conveyed the problems encountered when communicating under stress. The Situation Background Assessment and Recommendation (SBAR) structured communication technique was introduced, a helpful standardized approach for bridging different types of communication styles and diverse professional opinions.

The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) KM Working group (with representatives from APQC, Pfizer, Ernst & Young, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Deloitte, and NASA) presented an update covering critical KM ecosystem attributes that affect how organizations harness knowledge that is constantly updated and created across multiple customers and stakeholders. Progress in the areas of Cognitive Computing, Machine Learning, Influencing Behavior, and KM Business Rules development were briefed to a very attentive audience.

Mr. Tomczak of Google presented a fascinating exposition covering the nature of information and search activities, and how information is most useful when it is public, searchable, auditable, and collaborative, and how that supports the Google mission of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. Each information characteristic was highlighted with an example of how Google operationalizes the given factor in Google Drive Document Sharing and GitHub.

Internal NASA Updates

JSC, NSC, the NASA CIO, the Data Science/CIO, MSFC, IV&V and HEOMD provided updates on their organizational function and KM activities, an extensive and diverse set of initiatives that will benefit the Agency for years to come. A sample of some of these activities and initiatives follows:

  • The HEMOD Critical Knowledge activities that include the new online Critical Knowledge Gateway.
  • The NASA CIO Information Management program that is addressing data-driven decision-making through improved consistency; increased public access; improved quality in terms of performance, security, and mobility; and better data protection and preservation.
  • The NSC Enterprise Collaboration Services initiative with the NASA CIO that is improving collaboration tools available to NASA in terms of reduced cost, standardization, elimination of redundancies, and meeting the overall Agency scope of collaboration needs.
  • JSC covered opportunities resulting from the convergence of knowledge management, information architecture, and data science. These opportunities were characterized in terms of visualization, analysis, integration, and access/storage areas, resulting in potential improvements through faster and more informed decision-making; leveraging lessons of the past to minimize waste, rework, re-invention and redundancy; reduce the learning curve for new employees; and enhance and extend  existing content and document management systems.
  • MSFC covered the epistemological roots of reasoning and justification in terms of the application of knowledge, and how they are applying this framework to the design of knowledge activities. The MSFC Knowledge Suite includes case studies, collaborative functions, and communities of practice.

Closing Observations

On a final note, a draft NASA Knowledge Strategy was edited by the NASA CKOs and POCs, boding well for the future of KM for the Agency. Copies of the NASA Knowledge Journal and “My Best Mistake” books were also handed out to participants and were well-received.

This iteration of the Knowledge 2020 meeting advanced gains made in previous meetings and continued to build relationships and knowledge sharing across a diverse set of organizations. The spirit of learning was alive and well, and all participants were surprised at how much they learned.

Presentations from previous Knowledge 2020 events can be found here.

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