Transcript From Conceptual Architecture to Practical Services:

Portal Design for
KM Applications
A case study for dialogue at the
AIAA Delta Forum, Jan 2006
Edward Ng and Rebecca L. Nash, JPL
The
NASA way
The wrong way
The right way
My way
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In The Beginning – circa Y2K
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Identify & Define Service Needs
 If it’s free, customers want everything
 Money is the best prioritizing catalyst:
– Either indirect costs through overhead
– Or direct charge-back
 Several major needs percolated to the top:
– Managing, “owning” data
– Access control and security (authentication, then
authorization)
– Indexing, searching, and browsing
– Customizing to curb information overload
– Organizing, publishing, and navigating the intranet
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Jump Start the Services
 Typical prototype phase involving 100 to 200 users
 Usually start with home-grown or freeware pilots to
get users 1st hand appreciation
 Then followed by customer survey, tech eval, req
analysis, infrastructure analysis and procurement
 Service gradually grows to enterprise scope of
5000 to 6000 users
 At some point CIO had to decide on indirect vs.
direct charges
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Practical example : portals
Circa
2000
NASA prototype (2002)
JPL portal (2002)
NASA (external) portal (2003)
Inside NASA portal (2004)
Present development of
– flight mission portals and
– community portals for knowledge capture
– people connections
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Project Representation at Every
Information Domain
External
NASA
In-reach Team
Outreach NASA Inreach
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Snapshot of JPL Intranet Portal
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~6000 users
CIO burden funded
Average 140,000 page views per week
About 11 M hits per month
103 Channels (portlets)
70% use generic (non-personalized) version
Available 24 X 7
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Lessons Learned
 Growth of an information service is gradual
and executed in phases – “big bang”
approach is not viable
 It’s more bottom up (inductive) than top
down (deductive)
 There has to be CIO-level commitment
 There is always a possible distraction called
the latest technology on the horizon
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Lessons learned (2)
 There is a normal curve on customer capability:
the top 10% don’t need help, and the other
extreme needs extra help. So you target the
middle 70 -- 80%
 Customers like a real-life advocate behind the IS
 At the EC level – help them see a broader horizon
on IT; see their own niche in the knowledge space
 New generation is much more IT savvy
 Various levels of commitment of channel providing
 “The messenger is always blamed!!”
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Summary
 We started with a conceptual framework
 A team of six pioneers (Jeanne became our Chief
Knowledge Architect)
 Then came prototypes & pilots
 Those that remain grew into enterprise services:
e.g., portal, ELS, KnowWho, Directory
 We then promoted awareness lab wide
 Q&A
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Engineering & Technology Management Group
Questions on this Session?
Exchange: What technology tools improve (or could improve) your knowledge discovery and exchange?
Folder
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