(US and Canada) Ron Thompson, NASA’s Chief Data Officer and Deputy Digital Transformation Officer talks to Leonard Maganza, Syniti’s Chief Customer Officer, about the agency’s focus and digital transformation initiatives

Speaking on the importance of data quality and data governance at NASA, Thompson points out that it’s crucial to the point that it involves the safety of NASA’s astronauts. “Veracity of data is our priority for us. We want to make sure we’re seeing information that is factual, and that we are minimizing loss of life wherever possible. So, safety is number one. Safety is in our culture.”

He explains that this requires verified authoritative sources of data as it is pulled into NASA’s enterprise data platform and visualizations through the dashboards. “We don’t want to see conflicting information.”

NASA has created a data maturity model to ensure a good catalog and have data that is of the required quality. Thompson mentions this as a “very top of mind” responsibility and it is done through NASA’s governance model which is currently being revamped.

To Maganza’s question of where governments are going with trends, digital transformation, and data, and if Thompson sees a sea change in the domain, Thompson affirms that there is a positive transformation. “Look at NASA’s transformation; we’re transforming our workforce and workplace. We have metrics that we are putting in place where we can track movement into these areas and make sure we’re identifying the right priorities where we need to address pain points across the organization,” he adds.

From a digital transformation standpoint, Thompson says, organizations typically vector about 1% of gross spend. And NASA, which is about a $26 billion a year agency, isn’t using anywhere near that level of funds for this. “We launched a ‘coalition of the willing’ model a couple of years ago, and now we’re shifting to a more direct model of transformation where we pick fewer things, but they are really aligned to mission outcomes and pain points we have right now. So, that linkage is, is extremely important,” Thompson reveals.

Digital transformation, he points out, is not ‘some shiny object thing’ but is about artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“People really don’t understand the context behind it … digital transformation is not about just IT or services being delivered from IT. It’s really looking at digital use and service to transform an organization. So, we’re taking a look at our operating model, how our processes work, how our organizations are functioning, and how do we encourage sharing transparency,” Thompson concludes.