>> Hello! I'm Rebecca Spyke Keiser, Associate Deputy Administrator for Strategy and Policy.
I report directly up to the A suite and I'm in charge of the agency's strategy efforts.
About a year ago, Administrator Charlie Bolden asked us
to establish a long-term strategy effort within NASA.
Certainly, we have a strategic plan and you'll see on the screen
in a few minutes what the goals are in that strategic plan.
These goals are meant to be 20-year goals and the strategic plan,
the details of it go out about 5 years.
What Charlie felt we needed was more of a strategy, a more detailed strategy
to guide us for the next 20 years.
How you go about doing that?
That was the task that I was given and I set up a small office called the Office
of Strategy Formulation to help me develop that strategy.
We have a vision, to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do
and learn will benefit all humankind.
And we have a mission, to drive advances in science, technology and exploration,
to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of the earth.
And we have strategic goals that really are strategic plan.
The challenge in developing a strategy is using our vision,
mission and goals to prioritize what's the most important thing for NASA as an agency to do
over the next 20 years to the best benefit the Earth and the country.
We've also established policy priorities and these coordinate
with our vision and mission as an agency.
These policy priorities are to strengthen NASA's role as an integral component
of the nation's revitalized science, technology and innovation agenda.
They are to make most efficient use of NASA resources through improved project management;
enhance interagency, commercial and international partnerships;
structure and implement NASA programs to contribute to national competitiveness;
maximize the sustainability and utility of NASA's footprint;
and to structure NASA's eduction, workforce and communication efforts to focus
on the NASA's ability to contribute to the nation's innovation agenda.
And we also have program priorities, James Webb Space Telescope.
The space launch system in the multipurpose crew vehicle
and International Space Station and Commercial Crew and Cargo.
So you can see that our challenge is to integrate our policy priorities,
our program priorities with our goals and our vision and our mission,
and establish our long-term outlook in view for what we need to do as an agency.
We need to do this looking at the top trends that we're facing.
These are the things that are most important to focus on because they are going
to help guide how we're going to have to change as an agency over the next 20 years.
We have a talent gap because we have an aging workforce.
This is a big concern, I know, to all of you and to us as well.
That means that we're going to have a lot of people retiring over the next few years.
We are going to need a big influx of new folks coming into the agency.
We need that pipeline and that's going to of course impact who we are
as an agency and what do as an agency.
We have an aging infrastructure.
We have a flat budget with this aging infrastructure
and we need to do something about it.
We need to figure out how to revitalize our facilities and our infrastructure.
We need to figure out how to prioritize so that we figure out what we need to keep,
what we need to do through partnering and what we can do through other agencies.
We know that we have a whole new entity, a new group of entities here.
New commercial space companies that are entering into the market and that we're partnering
with this new space commercial space companies.
We also have the established space partners whom we deal with.
These are going to of course continue to impact what we do as an agency and how we do things
as an agency and we need to take these things into account.
We have other nations, some of whom we cooperate with today, some of whom we don't.
All of whom influence the international atmosphere of space and we need to think
about these when we're thinking about our strategy.
And of course, we have the budget.
We had budget pressures.
We have competition within the federal government for tax dollars.
And in the near future at least, we don't really foresee any increase in this budget line.
We have to take this into account.
So we've established the strategy efforts to again establish what the priorities are
for NASA going forward and how to prioritize things.
We want to establish an agency-wide commitment among agency leaders just
to develop this common strategy, to achieve our vision and mission.
We want to develop a process based on the scenario planning work
that I'll talk to you about more.
And, we want to use this in our overall strategic acquisition process
so that we're focusing on the long term when we're planning things now.
We wanted to find strategics priorities and build consensus.
And we want to align this agency level strategy planning
with mission director and center strategy efforts.
We're all working together on this.
We have a team of center representatives, mission director representatives
and other office representatives.
We want to respect the individual strategic efforts that are going on
and then also integrate them at the agency level.
And then we want to build an entire strategic framework.
We want to look out into the future and what the future might bring us.
Look at our portfolio that is happening right now and look at how prepared are we
for that future and what additional things do we need to do to be better prepared.
We want the strategy to be resilient.
We want it to be sustainable.
We know that of course change is inevitable, political change, economic change, et cetera.
We can't predict what all these changes are but we need
to have a strategy that's flexible enough to be able to adapt to these changes.
And so we want to use a new process called the strategy implementation process to turn strategy
into action, to make decisions and then feed those into the budget process.
And then, we want to look at new and different ways of doing things, foster innovation
and creativity through looking at again, what else can we do to be better prepared
and what innovative ways can we tee up to do these new things
to be better prepared for the future.
So, given these trends, we are looking at addressing strategic questions
in creating a strategic direction.
And so we created the office, the Office of Strategy Formulation.
We work through matrixing [phonetic] and teaming with other offices here
at headquarters and with the centers.
We also have reformulated the Strategic Management Council which is the senior council
of leaders, of officials in charge of the agency.
And we use a Strategic Management Council to discuss strategy, get input from senior leaders
on our strategic direction and then we feed
that into the strategic implementation process that I mentioned.
So, again we're working on this planning.
We're working on the portfolio assessment.
We're also working on assessment of NASA capabilities.
Capabilities and competencies.
What do we have today?
What do we have at the centers?
What do we really specialize in?
What makes NASA NASA?
And what do we need to add and change going forward?
We're looking at external trends and we're continuing to reformulate
and add to these external trends so that we can best formulate our scenarios going forward.
And we're developing new strategic goals for the 2014 Strategic Plan.
So, our first step is we develop 4 potential futures for NASA.
These futures are not meant to be a prediction of the future.
They're meant to be looking at the trends, what are the possible things that NASA might be asked
to do 20 to 30 years down the line?
What might be most important for NASA to contribute to the nation and the world?
These aren't meant to be mutually exclusive.
They're meant to be taken as a group and we then are going to use these to look at our portfolio
to see how prepared our we for all of these futures.
Now granted what we want to do through our external trending work
and our internal analysis work is try to look at the probabilities.
Are some of these futures more likely to happen than other futures?
And if that's the case, then we need to be more prepared for those.
Make sure that we have these things ready in our portfolio so that
if that future does occur, that we are ready.
So these 4 futures are based on the why of NASA.
The first one is US global leadership.
In this scenario, the most important why for NASA is to contribute
to the International Prestige of the United States, the importance of the United States
and how space really adds to that?
In this kind of scenario, you would emphasize large flagship programs
and you would also emphasize the kinds of things that only NASA can do and other countries can't.
So that other countries might want to join NASA in those efforts, might want to emulate NASA
or might want to do something to supplement what NASA does.
The second future is human drive to explore and extend human presence in space.
In this possible future, the why would be that it is innate in human nature to want
to explore farther and the place to explore farther is deeper
into the solar system with humans.
This also takes into account preparedness in case there happens to be some type
of large disaster here on Earth and we want to look at establishing some type
of long-term human outpost in space.
So, in this kind of future, you would emphasize human space flight and you would emphasize
that science that adds to human space flight.
The third future is direct measurable pay back.
And in this future, you would have the clear link between what NASA does
and the direct benefit back here on Earth.
You could see this kind of future if the economy continues to not be so good and so,
we are asked to do things that you can demonstrate with our large budget
that would contribute back to and benefit the Earth.
Things like earth science, things like technology
that develops spinoffs, that benefits society directly.
And so, those were-- would be the kinds of things you would emphasize in this future.
And on the fourth one is feeding technical innovation and expanding scientific knowledge.
In this type of future, you would emphasize the kinds of basic research and basic technology
that private entities probably won't do.
And so, you would do things at that low TRL level or that fundamental research level,
and then when it reaches a higher level, it would be span off into private industry
or another agency or another entity.
So again, you can see how these all work together, how they're based on the why
and how they complement each other but how in the future some
of these might be more emphasized than others and that's the challenge in preparing ourselves
and looking at our portfolio and that's really what we're doing.
So, we are now embarking on an effort to look at evolving these 4 futures based again
on more trending analysis, more research in order to better establish probabilities
and likelihood of some of these futures happening more than others.
We know it has to be based on data
and so we have engaged the contractor to go and do some analysis.
Give us what their thoughts are and do these futures match reality?
Do we need to refine the futures in some way perhaps that we can score these futures
so that we can wait some as more probable than others?
So that's our strategy effort.
That's what we're working on.
I would love to talk to any of you more about this strategy work that we're doing.
You could see it's very exciting and I'm very optimistic about it really helping us
in our planning for the long term as an agency.
So please do feel free to contact me.
If with any questions, any comments, any thoughts, I'd love to hear from you.
Thank you very much.