NASA Brings Robotics to Shared Services

When you think of innovation, NASA is an organisation that comes to the minds of many.

But how do you transfer the same level of technical excellence from space exploration to the back office?

This was Ken Newton's mission as Director of Service Delivery. His NASA Shared Services Centre (NSSC) took on the task in 2002.

We caught up with Ken ahead of his presentation during the Public Sector Innovation Summit in 2017, to get a sneak peek into some of the cutting-edge work the team have been working on and how other public sector organisations can learn from some of the best in innovation.

Key objectives

When the work started in 2002, the team spent years researching best practice before going live in 2006.

“We saw this as an opportunity to achieve management and mission support excellence comparable to what we achieved on a technical side.”

“Our focus has been to reduce resources needed for support, produce at a lower cost, and improve the quality and timeliness of our service.

“From our benchmarking we also saw opportunities in data integrity, consistency and accountability and we could be more efficient with our vendor model,” explains Ken.

Robotics and new frontiers

The NASA organisation employs more than 17,000 with 500 working at NASA Headquarters.

Since then, activities have been pinned around financial management, human resources, procurement, enterprise services and agency business support.

Today they’ve venturing into new territory and beginning their first robotics process automation for shared services.

The project launched after NASA’s Agency Innovation Mission Day where teams from every centre across the business spent the day looking at innovation submitting presentations that pushed the organisation forward, the prize at hand - a $10,000 kick start to get the projects in action.

The NSSC team used the opportunity to table some ideas using robotics and were successful in being one of the 13 chosen to receive the funding.

“It was the first ever NASA kick-start, and to be part of such a diverse and inclusive initiative was great,” explains Ken.

“We found out we were successful in December and are now working on our first automation project; it’s looking like this could grow into a new line of business.”

“Robotics has been a part of NASA DNA from the space stations and shuttles, to have it in shared services feels like a great fit.”

The first project is expected to be up and running in March.

Creating a culture for change

There aren’t many companies known for driving innovation in the same light as NASA, yet they still have the same barriers as any other 60-year-old public organisation. Ken believes the ability to change comes down to external customer communication and internal transparency.

“One of the biggest challenges for us has been bringing about that constant change and building customer confidence.”

“We try to be transparent in everything we do regarding performance and cost,” said Ken.

Over the coming months, as the robotics projects are expected to focus on internal efficiencies, Ken notes the roll out will be carefully monitored to ensure employees are not fearful of the impact:

“We will be managing the roll out slowly to make sure there is no negative impact on our employees. As we look at more activities to use robotics internally, we will find new opportunities for any staff impacted. Everyone is excited about the work we are doing, and we want to keep that our employees are still our number one asset.”