NASA’s digital transformation has a cultural side

Krista Kinnard When we talk about transformation at NASA or digital transformation at NASA, transformation is the noun, and our digital transformation officer really focuses on that. We are looking at NASA holistically, not just at our technology, but at the way we deliver on our mission, the way we work, the places that we work, what we produce, and thinking about how can we transform them into what they need to be to deliver on our mission today, tomorrow and into the future.

Tom Temin So give me an example.

Krista Kinnard Well, so digital is the adjective there. And so we know that the way that we’re going to get into that is through digital technology. And a really great example is looking at not only our mission embedded technologies, where we’ve had, for example, really great use of artificial intelligence and computer vision to help us look at the surface of the moon, but also starting to look at mission enabling technologies. So using data driven dashboards, for example, to manage projects, schedules and program schedules, and to be able to inform decision making or bringing in technology to look at how we manage our facilities. And rather than just having a huge swath of people wandering around, really empowering those people with digital tools to see what’s going on in those facilities.

Tom Temin Because NASA does have, honestly, a history of being late with projects and being things are over budget. So it sounds like there could be some business efficiencies through digital means that don’t exist now.

Krista Kinnard Certainly. A huge part of what we’re doing with digital transformation is really leaning in on how we can drive efficiency, effectiveness and really drive mission delivery.

Tom Temin All right. And your job in connection with this seems pretty specialized.

Krista Kinnard It is. And so one of the things that I do is, I really engage with our different communities across NASA, with our engineering communities, our scientific communities, but also our mission support communities. So think business analysts, think procurement professionals, think budget folks. And it’s really about bringing these teams together and thinking about what are the critical problems, what are the critical challenges we have to being able to deliver on our mission, and how can we bring digital enablement to drive down costs, drive down time to delivery?

Tom Temin And how do you get people to think about that? Because when you mention, say, a scientific community or maybe the engineering piece, those are mission connected and project connected and center connected. And when you talk about the enabling like procurement or HR those are agency wide or enterprise and you got to sort of get the lion to lay down with the lamb in some sense.

Krista Kinnard You do. I think one of the things that really helps NASA is we do have a great collaborative culture. And one of the things that we’ve really been leaning into, we just had, for example, a huge summer of AI agency wide campaign. It lasted June, July and August of this year. And we pulled together folks from across the organization. So scientists were listening to experts who were applying AI in a mission support area, and engineers were listening to scientists. And then we actually created these different forums in which people could come together and share lessons learned and best practices. So bringing those folks together and saying, hey, you shouldn’t be othering each other. You really should be coordinating with each other, helps to start bring down those barriers.

Tom Temin I guess even people that are scientifically or engineeringly to make up a word bent, may not necessarily know how they can improve their own functionality through some of these digital means or AI.

Krista Kinnard I think it’s about awareness of tools available or available to them, and it’s about awareness of how these new technologies are coming in. A lot of times we can get really stuck in the way we’ve always done it. And to being able to think out of that box, and see how that’s being applied across the organization is, I think, eye opening to folks who are very logically minded to say let’s take that expertise you have and channel it in a new direction.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Krista Kinnard. She’s digital transformation culture and communications lead at NASA’s Office of Digital Transformation, part of the CIO office. And how does this get operationalized? How do you decide, Well, here’s a process we can digitize. There’s all these people involved that are connected to it. How do you make something happen?

Krista Kinnard Well, so one of the things that we’ve stood up with in our Office of Digital Transformation is our digital service. So bringing in these digital service experts to use human centered design, design thinking methodologies to engage with the NASA community to say, what are your challenges, what are your pain points, what are you trying to do and what is keeping you from doing that. And then breaking it down and then building up using our excellent system engineering processes that we have to say, All right, now that we’ve broken this down into its component parts and really digested this challenge, now let’s start building it back up through technology.

Tom Temin And that takes a little bit of leverage because your digital service is only about four people. And so they in turn have to invoke a lot of resources to actually code projects or whatever.

Krista Kinnard And we have a really great partnership with our Office of the Chief Information Officer, right, who has far greater bandwidth than our digital service folks.

Tom Temin All right. So give us, again, some examples of maybe where you’ve changed something.

Krista Kinnard So we’ve got some great examples of using machine learning and artificial intelligence. One of our folks at Johnson Space Center was able to use computer vision, for example, and build out a pilot where we look at astronaut gloves on the International Space Station for any damages that they may have, and that can help inform decision making around. Is this glove something that I can wear on a spacewalk or not? Because you can imagine any kind of damaged glove could potentially lead to a life threatening situation.

Tom Temin But the astronaut wearing it couldn’t see it because it’s three inches from his nose.

Krista Kinnard Well, so there’s different types of damage. And that’s something that an AI model can help.

Tom Temin So it’s sort of a tell a metric type of thing.

Krista Kinnard Sure. And it’s an experiment phase as we are speaking. So there’s still fine tuning a lot of those details.

Tom Temin So the alternative would be just throw it out the glove and that’s expensive.

Krista Kinnard Or don’t do the spacewalk.

Tom Temin Which is even more expensive or opportunity lost.

Krista Kinnard Yeah, it’s an opportunity lost. So what we’re trying to do here is maximize benefit while managing risk.

Tom Temin And as the culture and communications lead, what’s your specific deliverable?

Krista Kinnard So I think a little bit bigger than these individual projects. And so if you want to speak to a big cultural success, our Summer of AI campaign had so much attendance from across the entire agency, which can be really hard at NASA. It’s a huge agency. Folks are head down all the time in the great mission work that they’re doing. So being able to bring people together, to have those conversations, to cross-pollinate, to build momentum around an area of technology is really powerful. And we have so much follow up and so much engagement saying the summer of AI was fantastic, let’s do more.

Tom Temin And how did you come to this? What’s your background that brought you to this kind of a unique sounding role?

Krista Kinnard It is a very unique role. And so I’m actually a data scientist by training. And when I joined government, it was because I realized very quickly that you can’t just go to someone and say, here’s your machine learning, Ok, I’m done. There’s this whole change management process that you have to employ to be able to take a tool that really is incredibly powerful and put it in the hands and operationalize it by the people who need to use it. And that’s really about human connection, that’s really about driving culture change. So that’s my primary focus in my role.

Tom Temin And do you get around physically to the different places, centers, offices of NASA’s that required?

Krista Kinnard I have not made it to all of our centers yet, but I’ve only been with NASA for a year. But what I’ve seen is amazing. And one of the things that I just love about NASA, every time you go to a center or you meet someone, there’s this amazing culture of, Hey, check out this cool thing I did. And it’s just such an exciting environment to be a part of. And it just spawns these really wonderful conversations and like, You did this cool thing. Well, have you heard about this other cool thing that they’re doing at this other center? So bridging those gaps, I think is another really critical component of my role as a culture lead.