NASA Chief Knowledge Architect David Meza on Implementing Knowledge Management
The Concord® team recently sat down with David Meza, the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre. With a background in computer and information sciences, Meza has held various roles at NASA for more than 20 years, from IT management to workspace engineer, overseeing 12,000 computer systems at the Johnson Space Centre (JSC).
Meza said the story of NASA’s bold move into sophisticated knowledge management begins with the simple story of a taxonomist and a web developer. The two met to establish protocols for the release of data to one another, but could not agree on the terms of the exchange. At an alignment meeting, it was later discovered that they were both using the word metadata, but had completely different ideas about what metadata meant. This single meeting triggered Meza’s thinking and eventually led to the creation of NASA’s Knowledge Architecture Office.
In our wide-ranging discussion, Meza touched on six concepts that can help capital project leaders in their own efforts to establish a knowledge architecture.
1| Understand the three components of an effective Knowledge Architecture
When Meza and his team set up NASA’s first Knowledge Architecture Office, it took them several years to identify and fully define the three pillars of a complete Knowledge Architecture: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Extraction.
The catalyst was that fateful miscommunication between the taxonomist and the web developer.
“That was when we first identified the need for a group dedicated to managing all aspects of not only Knowledge Management, but Information Sciences, or Informatics within JSC... The KAO’s role was to enable the sharing of information and to make it easier for a Knowledge Management Strategy to be implemented on an information science platform. …
A couple of years went by as we first established the role of the KAO. We then realized there was still at least one more aspect missing, related to how we extracted knowledge from our data.
2 | Raise awareness by identifying a “highly visible” first project
Meza said that NASA’s first big challenge was to raise awareness and get buy-in from people inside the organization. They did it by focusing first on a highly visible project that broke down silos and encouraged everyone to get on the same page.
“The number one challenge was to raise awareness and buy-in from the various entities within the organization on the need for knowledge management capabilities... Everybody has their own systems for how they store data.”
3 | Use Knowledge Informatics to leverage enterprise search
Meza used knowledge informatics to make a persuasive outcome-based argument in favor of Knowledge Architecture and Knowledge Management.
“There is a group at JSC whose role is to debrief the astronaut as they come down from the International Space Station... If a team member initiates a query... we could see how that was trending, over the years.”
4 | Host a structured data alignment workshop as part of the planning initiative
“The planning initiative must consider the various requirements for analysis of the data... Those projects may have already come to the end of their life cycle, or they may be running in parallel to other projects.”
Foundational questions to ask during the alignment workshop include:
- What is the best method for storing information?
- What is the best method for transmitting and sharing the information from an informatics standpoint?
- Am I going to use an API?
- What type of database if any am I going to use to store the information, and how should the data be structured within that database?
5 | Establish a Master Data Management Plan and Standard Document Specifications
“When I talk about Knowledge Architecture I discuss my ideas about the information that should be associated with the data... A Standard Documentation Specification requires a Master Data Management Plan (MDMP).”
6 | Always begin by defining the starting question and data-driven visualization
“The most important part for our approach is to define the starting question, as initiated by the expert team... As always, the methods will have to be evaluated and refined over time to make sure they’re working properly.”
David Meza is the Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Houston, Texas.