NASA has issued a request for information on a draft statement of work for a complete operations overhaul of its website, nasa.gov, and intranet, insidenasa.nasa.gov.
The draft SOW emphasizes the use of open source software, cloud computing technologies and an integrated approach to search, video, social media and content management system capabilities across the agency’s 10 centers and satellite facilities.
According to NASA, daily traffic to nasa.gov is approximately 600,000 unique visitors and 43 million “hits” across 140 disparate websites and web applications. The site has a content base of 700,000 web pages.
Citing its current web operations, NASA says:
Frequently, custom web applications are built to assist in the design or operation of these missions. In addition, missions will often publish information to the public under its own auspices. These sites are extremely diverse, in that they have a wide variety of audiences, uses and technologies. The different requirements for these services have resulted in a Web environment that is highly autonomous but inconsistent in terms of technology, management, security and information search capabilities. In addition, cross-functional services such as enterprise search are unavailable and complex to implement.
Overview of requisites for the new site:
1. We will strive for vendor independence through the use of open source software. 2. We will prefer COTS, GOTS and Open Source solutions over custom built solutions. This includes cloud offerings. 3. Open standards based solutions will be utilized over closed proprietary solutions. 4. All applications will expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. 5. At a minimum, data access services should be provided by RESTful technologies. 6. Applications that require authentication will integrate with Agency authentication services.
The service provider must collaborate with other vendors as part of NASA’s agency-wide IT Infrastructure Integration Program (I3P) which aims to “integrate business processes and information across organizational lines efficiently and securely.”
Request for information and SOW documents below. Responses are due March 6, 2012.
