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and some things not so well by definition,” former NASA CIO Linda Cureton said. “And the challenge is to balance efficiency with effectiveness.”
Decentralization drives innovation
When thinking about accountability in the federal govern- ment, it’s easy to imagine everything flowing through an agen- cy’s headquarters. Although NASA’s headquarters is critical for some centralized policy and oversight, the autonomy of the 10 field centers — each with its own CIO and way of doing business — is what drives some of the agency’s most remarkable achievements.
Cureton viewed the challenges from both sides, having served as the CIO at the Goddard Space Flight Center before leading IT for the entire agency.
“As a center CIO, you get a chance to really see up close and personal what NASA does,” she said. “The decentral- ized aspects of it allow for a research-and-development type culture to have the flexibility [it needs.] For an agency like NASA, [the governance structure] has to be federated. I think it has to be decentralized, with a CIO managing the tension that exists naturally.”
But it’s not simply autonomy that sparks innovation. Some- times it’s outright competition.
“There’s absolutely competition between and among cen-
ters for work and research opportunities,” said former God- dard CIO Adrian Gardner, who is now CIO at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “The centers actually com- pete against each other for research opportunities, just like a private-sector entity.”
As with any legitimate competition, that approach can lead to tensions or rivalries, even within an agency working toward the same ultimate mission.
“Absolutely they butt heads,” Gardner said of the NASA centers. “But I think you have to butt heads to get the best out of people and organizations. And at the end, you had the people who were best at that competency.”
He added that when it comes to which center receives cer- tain projects, “you can’t ignore the politics, [but] at the end of the day, it works out.”
And that precarious balance between competition and coop- eration doesn’t just exist among the agency’s field centers — it exists between NASA and the private sector as well.
“I see [NASA] as a feeder to the private sector,” Gardner said, citing patents generated from NASA’s work. “I think of NASA as more of an agency that gives away some of its tech so that industry can take that tech and productize [it], which gives industry the capabilities to build products.”
However, that dynamic can complicate efforts to enforce standards and identify opportunities to save money across the agency.
The challenges of compliance
Given that the agency constantly innovates and relies so heavily on technology, it’s hard to nail down exactly what constitutes IT at NASA. To implement her office’s goals, current CIO Renee Wynn has settled on a relatively concise definition: the hard-
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