In January, the White House announced the Open Government Directive, instructing all Federal agencies to break down barriers to enable transparency, participation, and collaboration between the federal government and the American public.

Today marks 120 days since the Open Government Directive was announced and is the deadline for federal agencies to publish an Open Government Plan laying out how they intend to be more open and integrate Open Government principles into their activities.

I am honored to have been peripherally involved in developing some parts of NASA’s Open Government Plan. One of the most gratifying parts of the experience was discovering that a large number of NASA’s activities already embody Open Government principles. The Open Government Plan simply continues to build upon NASA’s long heritage of forging new ground and sharing its results with the American public.

NASA’s Open Government Framework postulates that agencies must focus on policy, tools, and culture to successfully implement Open Government principles within their organization.

I am thrilled to report that Nebula was identified as one of the primary tools that will enable NASA to more easily engage with the public in addition to providing a more efficient method for NASA to deliver IT services to its Scientists and Researchers.

Nebula Infrastructure-as-a-Service allows groups inside NASA to provision resources within minutes, avoiding the lengthy procurement, certification, and security processes required for new computing infrastructure and allowing NASA to realize tremendous savings through it’s pooled resource model.

When completed, Nebula Platform-as-a-Service will provide NASA software engineers with a robust development environment and sophisticated set of tools that make it faster, easier, and much less expensive to deliver data-driven and scalable Web sites that encourage public participation and collaboration.

Nebula will open the doors to transparency, participation and collaboration with powerful, economical computing resources built for government. By releasing the Nebula software stack as Open Source and publishing our entire operating model, Nebula will enable other government Agencies to benefit from NASA's experience.

Providing a way for the public to more easily participate in its activities will allow NASA to tap into the incredible power of American innovation. When citizens can give feedback, contribute ideas, and engage in an open dialog with the Government on issues that matter to them, everybody benefits. The Nebula team is honored to be part of this journey toward a new type of Government, one that is more open, efficient and responsive to the needs of American citizens.