Sunday, February 7, 2010

NASA Wants Your Input

NASA has implemented an online brainstorming tool, open to the general public, seeking to improve openness, transparency, participation, and collaboration. Here is your chance to participate in developing the future of America's space program.

As you may know, I'm a big fan of openness and transparency. I'm also a fan of collaboration in science and government. In the United States, we live in a participative democracy, meaning that citizens are encouraged to get involved in government, from writing your Congressman to serving in the military to running for office. NASA's implementation of a system like this will encourage participation in government, which is a good thing.

The brainstorming system that they are using, by IdeaScale, allows for ideas to be submitted and voted upon by registered users, as well as allowing comments (like a blog) for the purpose of opening discussions. And if you have an account with Google, Yahoo!, WordPress, or AOL, you can log in by authenticating against that account.

So what are you waiting for? Go to the site and tell NASA what they need to be doing!

No comments: