NASA looks to e-conferencing to cut costs

NEWS US space agency, NASA, is to implement audio and data conferencing at three of its key sites in an effort to slash the amount of money spent flying scientists and executives between locations. The John Glenn Research Center, Kennedy Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will all be linked by Latitude's MeetingPlace software. Ari Tapper, federal sales manager for Latitude, said: "NASA has had its budget cut over the years, and is now focussing on becoming cost-effective. This is the cheapest way of bringing experts together from different locations. "It will enable them to produce planning documents and designs much more easily." The installation will replace a proprietary, internal network that could not exchange data or even operate without an administrator. MeetingPlace introduces secure data exchange facilities for scientists and engineers - but it still does not offer video-conferencing. Tapper defended the omission. "Every organisation out there has a video conference room. But it requires all partner organisations to have the same set-up. NASA is now dealing with a wide variety of contractors in its exploration programs, and it needs a communciation strategy that can be extended to all of them, and their mobile workers." Outsourcing is still a relatively new development for NASA, which used to rely entirely on government agencies. Dan Leviten, Latitude's business development manager for the government channel, said the company did have some plans for introducing video in future.