Nasa

Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Dorothy Leonard

David Kiron

Introduction

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have struggled to find the right balance between mission performance and cutting-edge space exploration.

      United States Congress established NASA on October 1, 1958 because of technological feat and alarmed by the prospect of falling behind Cold War Adversary. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) supervised the nation’s rocket, jet and space systems. NACA contributed to 8000 employees, an annual budget of $100 million, three research laboratory and two smaller test facilities.

      JPL was a widely recognize world leading aerospace and robotic research intuition based in southern California. JPL began earning its high reputation with its work for the Department of Defense during World War II.   JPL’s name derived from its research and design of the first rocket-assisted take offs for military aircraft carriers.

ISSUE: Information technology (IT) system.

In 2000, the US Congress which funds NASA called on the agency to develop appropriate knowledge management (KM) tools to reduce the risk of future mission failures and to address impending retirements. Until 2002, most of NASA’s knowledge management tools were IT systems.

IT systems, such as Internet-based databases and portals that organize and make more accessible lessons learned have been relatively easy to pitch and to sell to people at the agency to fund.   The problem is IT system don’t address the critical need for the most experienced people to mentor and train others or to share tacit knowledge from one mission to another.

      NASA formal mechanism for sharing lessons learned across the agency was its Lessons Learned Information System (LLIS) which contained lessons from the operation or design of particular missions and project elements.

NASA’s web... [continues]

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