NASA's Gov 2.0 Gone Wrong

Last month, NASA asked the public to help name Node 3 in an online contest. Stephen Colbert gave NASA the "Colbert Bump" by highlighting the contest on his show and asking fans to vote for the name "Colbert." Fans responded; the name "Colbert" won the online vote by a landslide.

Yet NASA announced two days ago that they will not honor the results of the vote, and will instead call the node "Tranquility." Although NASA has defended its decision by pointing to the contest rules, which give NASA the "right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the agency," the move prompts us to ask, "why bother?"

Since NASA did not honor the public's democratic choice for a node name, we can assume that they did not truly need help with naming the node. Instead, the contest was an attempt to interest the public in NASA and the International Space Station. In short, it was a publicity stunt. I don't mean to demean the contest; it was an innovative way to reach out to the public. Like many Gov 2.0 projects, it gave the public a voice in a NASA decision, even it if was a small decision.

But NASA faltered. By ignoring the voice of the people, it undermined not only the contest effort, but also future attempts to involve the public.

This instance hints at the fundamental disconnect that threatens the Gov 2.0 movement: what I call outreach vs. inreach. Much of what makes Web 2.0 different from Web 1.0 is that it allows many voices to participate in a conversation. In Washington, federal agencies have made strides in the use of Web 2.0 tools such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Yet with few exceptions, they use these new technologies for a much older purpose: public outreach. You can use a blog as a shiny new megaphone, but it's still a megaphone.

Both I and others have referred to this use as "Web 1.5." It would seem that faith in technological determinism has caused feds to skimp on that last one-half. Maybe they are crossing their fingers and rounding up. But if their true goal is Gov 2.0, they are missing the mark: there is only outreach. The government, as usual, reaches out to the public. In this case, NASA promotes the ISS to the world.

But if government were to demonstrate true innovation, its public affairs officers would open their minds and firewalls and allow for inreach -- the process by which the public reaches into government to affect change. For NASA, this would have been simple: allow the results of the online poll to stand. Then, they could have gone back to the public with the message that they truly listened. But NASA closed the feedback loop by demonstrating to the public that they do not value inreach nearly as much as outreach. The result? The outreach spoils. NASA gave the public a voice on their site, and then in true bureaucratic fashion, did not listen to what the voice was saying. That's not good outreach.