Microsharing has benefits for NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued a report on a pilot program it conducted involving enterprise social networking software. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s pilot project, called NASAsphere, was powered by Socialcast's microsharing platform.

NASA wanted to learn if the adoption and use of online social collaboration by its employees and contractors would ease knowledge sharing across the organization and geographic boundaries. Among the findings is the conclusion that microsharing and internal enterprise collaboration tools benefit large enterprises and government agencies such as NASA. The organization also concludes that the technology should be implemented across the organization this year to unite various centers and agencies, according to a news release from Socialcast about the pilot program.

Data regarding the NASAsphere pilot includes the following:

• Seventy-eight employees initially used Socialcast, and invited 398 other colleagues to participate. Within 60 days, 295 users had joined the community.
• Users said it was "easy to communicate openly" (82 percent) and that discussions and comments were "on topic" (76 percent), "helpful" (66 percent) and "appropriate" (75 percent).
• Users reported such benefits as accelerated communication, sharing and problem solving; improved peer-to-peer communication; and a deeper understanding of how decisions are made.
• Ninety-three percent of questions posted to the community were answered by users at different NASA centers (11 located across the United States).
• Forty percent of participants were Gen X; 24 percent, Gen Y; and 24 percent, "Baby Boomers."

The full NASAsphere report can be found here.