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Government 2.0: NASA CoLab-oration

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- 1 days and 16 hours ago

This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” These words are no less true today, over 150 years later. But now there are many new technologies and tools available that can be used to measure and influence public opinion. One thing I have been thinking about a lot lately is how the government can use these tools to further its existing goals, and enable novel ones as well.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known by most people as NASA, is a government agency heavily covered by mainstream news media â€“ when things go wrong. But there is an interesting new experimental initiative at NASA called CoLab, the goals of which are to act as “advisor and consultant to groups within NASA, building direct and open collaborations between the public and NASA scientists and engineers...[and] use technology to facilitate public contributions to NASA activities.”

At the recent INTERACT08 event on media and technology held in Washington DC, John Bell of Ogilvy PR pointed out that great “emerging” brands like eBay, YouTube, and Netflix are authentic, adaptive, relevant, transformative, fresh, immersive, and social. So when Peter Gray, the NASA CoLab Program Manager, met with me on a recent trip to Washington, DC and said that their big buzzwords were “participate, collaborate, and innovate,” that sounded a lot like emerging NASA brand â€“ and Government 2.0 â€“ to me.

NASA CoLab is trying some innovative things to reach out to the public. There is currently a co-working space in Silicon Valley open seven days a week. Eventually they hope to host co-working spaces in major U.S. cities that are “the NASA equivalent of an Apple Store” as Mr. Gray put it. That would be very hip indeed.

Additionally, the “Luna Philosophie” series, held at San Francisco’s Yahoo! Brickhouse incubator (in coordination with the full moon, no less), is a series of open conversations on different topics broadcast using USTREAM.TV. CoLab has also participated in national conferences, and held Camp CoLab brainstorming sessions with NASA staff about how to change and adapt CoLab across the ten or so different NASA facilities around the country.

Leaving the real world for a minute, there is an elaborate NASA presence on “CoLab Island” in Second Life, providing information about all sorts of activities with an additional emphasis on having “launch parties” and the like (a great description can be found here). However, despite this high-quality (and perhaps necessary) presence, because Second Life has very few habitual users, I wonder about the effect it has had.

If the goal is to promote NASA activities, are there not simpler ways to reach more people? And if the goal is to make personal connections with techies and influencers, one might question the ultimate value of Second Life outreach in comparison with having scientists and astronauts at (for example) the recent DEMOfall 08, Web 2.0 Expo, and BlogWorldExpo events simply chatting with people and handing out CoLab swag. As I heard over and over at INTERACT08, sometimes “old school” can be a great tactic even as part of a high-tech strategy.

More disappointing is the lack of presence of NASA CoLab on popular social networking services, where it is arguably easier to listen to and engage with people. On Twitter and Pownce, they have under 300 followers. A quantitative breakdown for the last few months shows they are following zero people, posting once every 3-4 days, and not engaging in @ replies with other users. Ironically, a key CoLab staffer, Ariel Waldman, is well-known for her work at Pownce. The CoLab presence on Facebook (108 total group members) isn’t much better, with the main page still advertising an â€˜upcoming’ event in June 2007. (It should be noted, however, that other NASA brands do very well on Twitter).

This is clearly a work in progress and isn’t yet an outstanding model of government “CoLab-oration” with its citizens. Nevertheless, with an agile, lightly-funded staff, CoLab must be given a lot of credit for experimenting with new ideas, reaching out to the public, and doing more than most any other government agency in taking advantage of new media.

As Richard Edelman, President and CEO of the highly-regarded eponymous public relations firm, recently pointed out on his blog, government public relations is a tricky business. Along the lines of his statement that, “Effective PR is about facts, but also ease of access and compelling examples,” the government could use CoLab as an exemplar, a program giving citizens access to information, and providing people with compelling examples of the good things government does every day.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government.

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