EDUCAUSE | IT Governance

Information Technology Challenges at NASA, Michael Bolger, CIO, Kennedy Space Center, NASA

llarsen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:37:12 -0500

Information Technology Challenges at NASA
Michael Bolger, CIO
NASA Kennedy Space Center

Opening General Session

2008 Southeast Regional Conference
Jacksonville, FL
2 June 2008

This keynote presentation discussed the current IT environment at NASA and the IT challenges that the agency faces as it moves into a new era of space exploration. The CIO from the Kennedy Space Center discussed new strategic directions and supporting initiatives being implemented across the agency to enable future mission success.

NOTES

Michael Bolger began his comments by noting that he had visited the EDUCAUSE website and had seen from the 2008 Current IT Issues Survey that Higher Education and NASA have very similar issues and challenges. NASA has had a long affiliation with universities and colleges and there is a core alliance with university researchers.

NASA itself is quite complex. Bolger has been with NASA since he was a coop student. NASA started naming CIOs about the same time that Higher Education began to do so. His office is now staffed with 140 civil servants plus 500 contractors.

It takes too many resources to send each person into space now. Earth is the most suitable planet in the solar system for humans. Bolger quoted Stephen Hawking who said he didn't "think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

About NASA

The current mission of NASA includes

Space Shuttle - Only 10 missions left for the shuttle
Complete the international space station.
Develop balance over the program of science exploration and aeronautics
Crew exploration vehicle
Encourage appropriate partnerships for continued work
Establish lunar return program having the maximum possible utility for later missions to Mars and other destinations

NASA has four directorates:

Space operations
Aeronautics research
Science
Exploration systems

While there is one NASA it is made up of a number of key centers including

Johnson Space Center in Texas
Kennedy Space Center in Florida
Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama
Jet Propulsion Lab [JPL] in California

All are spending more time on exploration.

Kennedy sits on a wildlife preserve with a 3 mile long runway and it supports 4 missions with 1500 people - only 2000 of whom are civil servants. Cape Canaveral rocket row is adjacent to KSC. Being on a wildlife preserve has its own set of issues.

Space Shuttle
International Space Station
Launch Services - for non-NASA flights
Constellations supports manned space flight

KSC's economic impact = $1.7 billion injected into Florida

Bolger showed us photos of the Space Shuttle, Delta2, Atlas5, and Delta4 heavy rockets, and the lab for the Space Shuttle.
KSC processes payloads from all over the world.
They also support airshows by the Air Force Thunderbirds.
He talked briefly about the Phoenix mission, the discovery of what looks like ice under dirt, and mentioned that there was surprise at the hilliness of the Mars terrain.

Transforming IT to enable NASA's Mission

Bolger remarked again of the parallels in mission and challenges in our missions and his.
We both provide the computer and infrastructure for others to do their work and we have a similar set of challenges.

NASA is a complex organization. Across NASA there are 18K civil servants and 44K contractors
They have a budget of $2.2 billion annually which is 13% of NASA's budget
There are 8 thousand websites ~4 thousand are public & ~4 thousand are internal
For the first time they are moving towards a centralized email system which will need to handle 530 thousand messages per day to 38 thousand accounts.

Each center has an IT unit and many of the individual projects do as well. Most of the project IT units have their own CIO.

There are 80K desktops, 3 WAN with 6 million IP addresses, 80 connections to different ISPs, and 200 connections to universities and partners

Budget

NASA gives the IT units 13% of the budget compared to a 7-0% average for other federal government units. Aerospace and defense units typically receive 3.5-4.5%.

While complexity of IT has grown over 40 years there were no CIOs until 10 years ago. These CIOs support

Institutional IT
Program IT
Mission directorate

They have not had enterprise-wide IT. Enterprise architecture is not optional of course, every enterprise has one. However, some were planned and others just happened.

Issues/challenges

Security vulnerabilities
Infrastructure inhibits cross-center collaboration and it doesn't integrate well
Significant proliferation of tools and a lack of standards to enable integration
Lack of visibility into NASA IT investments, and inadequate controls on IT spending
Inconsistent understanding of how IT is managed at NASA , ie, what is the role of the CIO

Key principles that they work by are

IT serves the NASA mission
Buy what they can - business/mission processes and information across organizational boundaries
Implement technology to achieve efficiencies and ensure they are efficiently implemented
Security IT solutions

They have set up strategic teams to make decisions about

CIO role - the overall role within the organization
Finance - increased visibility and controls
Infrastructure - consolidation wherever possible
Governance - they need a process to make decisions

[They are currently running over 2500 applications across the organization]

Role of CIO has been decided to be compliance, alignment, and service delivery
Highly specialized IT for mission (program specific things) are not on the list of responsibilities. Applications belong to science and engineering, project management, business management, in other words, the CIOs won't tell the CFOs to use SAP or not.

The CIOs are responsible for data centers, communications, infrastructure applications, and end user integration. Their core is comprised of overall governance & policy, enterprise architecture, IT security, relationship management, resources management, innovation management, service management & delivery (ops), project management (development), and performance management.

NASA's IT is a service provider who handles governance structure and priorities.

They have a Strategy and Investment Board which is director level with senior stakeholders and this is the board that makes decisions regarding investment priorities and selection (security, standardization of & security of end user devices, consolidation of security operations and incident response, consolidation of applications, consolidation of data centers & strong authentication for systems which will be a part of the common smart card/badge to be implemented across the federal government. Bolger noted that there are 34 data centers now and the goal will be to reduce that number to one per center.

They also have a Program Management Board who makes decisions regarding application and infrastructure and keep the project on track through design and implementation.

The Management Board makes decisions regarding operations. If I caught it correctly there is a decision to consolidate communications. Currently the networks are managed as independent services and the move will be to move to zones by centers.

Bolger noted that there is no overarching IT integration across NASA at this time. Under this new organizational structure they will first look to see what they actually have and see where they can consolidate in the areas of:

Business standards
Architecture
Performance goals
Investment planning

They plan to move funding into directorates for baseline core services. There will be a charge-back if more is needed for a program within that directorate.

Bolger believes that success will be:

Seamless and secure
Investing in the right solutions
Accessible, integrated, actionable
Reliable, efficient, and well managed
Credible

In summary, Bolger says that significant transformation of IT management and infrastructure is underway.

As an aside he indicated that many people say "phoohey" on space exploration wondering "what's it ever done for me?" NASA's budget is less than 1% of the federal budget and they continually innovate and invent new products that we use in our daily lives. He did not mention the long heralded Tang but did list

Radiation blocking lenses
Hearing aid and battery technology
Fire resistant insulating fabric
Lightweight composite hip replacement
Velcro
Digital cell phone technology
Programmable pacemakers
Advances in heart pumps

Audience questions and responses:

Q Who plays Solomon when they sort through the 2500 applications that they want to consolidate?
Bolger said they have categorized them into 4 groups and put a responsible adult in charge. (office of the chief engineer) They are focusing on applications for the Exploration Program now. He said it's not worth switching out the old applications for old programs that will soon be gone.

Q Who manages the compatibility?
Bolger indicated that this was a huge question. There was a first meeting at Marshall with all chief engineers, program managers, CIOs and more will follow. The Agency CIO is in DC and has the role of a visionary. Each center will have a CIO. Because many programs also had CIOs it has been confusing. The decision has been made that program CIOs will have a title change. All IT decisions were made at the lowest level in the past with focus on the project.

Q In regard to enterprise architecture, Bolger indicated that they are planning where they are going - it is a process.

Q How do you decide what to keep/archive with the all of the data that NASA has?
Bolger indicated that there are many rules on records management. There is a formal program that imposes requirements and guidelines across programs.

Q An IT audit of a university system showed a need for internal IT auditors. What is the situation at NASA?
NASA does not have internal audit but rather one from the Inspection General and fairly frequently. They are also complying with OMB and other rules for systems, infrastructure etc - about 150 per systems. They have to decide if they could meet it or accept risk. GAO also comes in occasionally.

Q What top three keep you awake at night?
1) Infrastructure consolidation initiative because systems are now fragmented
2) Security - highest level of attention
3) Funding - still have to do the shuttle for 2 more years which means that they do not have enough to do the new Exploration Program appropriately yet.
4) Safety is always the top priority

Implementing Effective ERP Governance and Portfolio Management

renaudr — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:38:28 -0500

Implementing Effective ERP Governance and Portfolio Management

Systems Evolution Track

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Speaker(s)

Jennifer Flagel, Director of Technical Projects, George Mason University

Walter W. Sevon, Jr., Deputy CIO & Executive Dir, Technology Systems Division, George Mason University

John B. Wheat, Senior Manager, BearingPoint, Inc.

Session convener: Ann Kovalchick, Deputy CIO, Tulane University

Rather than repeat the content of the presentation, I have attached the PowerPoint slides that were used. I thank the presenters for their willingness to share these materials.

The presenters derived a set of lessons learned from their experience which I find interesting and provocative.

Governance process used for system installation does not work well for continued support.

This is a very interesting observation which focuses on the critical period between implementation and ongoing operations. The implementation phase requires tight coordination and decision making in the context of typically demanding project schedules. The operational phase lacks this sense of urgency, but also requires a structure that aligns operations with strategy.

It takes a significant investment in time & people to establish a workable governance process.

Institutions typically underestimate the investment required to arrive at a sound governance structure and process. To take this a step further, they can also struggle with reconciling emerging processes with existing ones.

Combining governance with improved program management tools and procedures improves management data & control.

From my perspective, this observation points to the need to save time and expedite communication by leveraging technology. At Dickinson College our Institutional Systems Planning and Priorities Committee makes recommendations on dozens of projects and initiatives and also tracks the progress of projects that are underway. Without Web based tools, this would be virtually impossible to do. Choosing the right tools at the right level of granularity presents challenges. In our case, we wrote our own tool suited to local needs.

Bringing in a consulting organization to help is less threatening to the organization and can be very effective.

George Mason University brought in a consulting firm that was able to apply lessons learned and best practices from across higher education to the new governance structure. Although this experience has been a positive one, I wonder whether it is always necessary to involve an external entity in arriving at a sound governance process, particularly when an existing campus governance structure dictates the constraints of an IT governance structure.

If you convert from one automated system to another expect significant issues for Functional Offices to change their business processes.

This lesson has great implications for governance when functional offices struggle to map existing business practices to a new system and request resources to configure or customize the new system accordingly. I consider this tension to be inevitable and natural, but it falls to the governance process to differentiate ‘must haves’ from ‘nice to haves’. It also falls to the governance structure to relate finite IT resources to the strategic direction of the institution.

Don’t underestimate the scale of effort required to create an effective communication program.

Absolutely. In my experience the level of communication that characterizes the system implementation, when that activity is normally part of the project plan, falls off during the operational phase. It is also a challenge to determine the depth of communication needed for key stakeholders. This activity requires constant attention, imagination and work.

Podcast: American Higher Education Is Going Global: Implications for CIOs, National Networks, and Federal Policymakers

gbayne — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:02:04 -0500

This 44 minute podcast features a keynote address by Jeffrey S. Lehman, Former President of Cornell University. His speech, "American Higher Education Is Going Global: Implications for CIOs, National Networks, and Federal Policymakers," was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Policy Conference in Arlington, Virgina.

U.S. universities have come to see their universes in global terms, most visibly in brand-new overseas campuses. But just as important are joint teaching and research projects that dramatically intensify the flow of data to points halfway around the world. Historically, such data flows have required the physical transportation of people or storage media from place to place. Dramatic improvements in networking technology, however, are changing academic leaders' perceptions of the kinds of collaborations that are possible. The most ambitious forms of network cooperation test the capabilities of the global cyberinfrastructure, with bits crossing campus, regional, national, and international networks. Each of the four tiers is a vital link. Each involves a different set of actors, challenging us to develop new policies and governance structures that respond to the concerns of each level, as well as a truly global perspective that is not yet effectively captured. Our national policy community must step into this void, helping demonstrate the range of possibilities and the choices we face, while respecting and reflecting that people in other countries will likely perceive matters differently from us.

2008 Southwest Conference Will Address Empowering Community Through Technology

cluckett — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:44:00 -0600

The 2008 Southwest Regional Conference, "Empowering Community Through Technology," will be held February 20–22 in Houston, Texas. View the program and register by January 23 to save money with low, early-bird rates.

Jean E. Engle, chief knowledge officer, NASA/Johnson Space Center, will present a general session (topic TBA) on Friday, February 22.

The conference will focus on these topic areas:

Empowering Our Teaching and Learning Communities
Leading the Charge for Change
Making IT Work: The Confluence of Technology, People, and Expectations
Corporate and Campus Solutions

View the list of speakers, who will address pertinent topics such as IT governance structure recommendations, succession planning for CIOs, tracking assessment data for general education, and active learning with mobile and wireless technologies. In addition, half-day preconference seminars will cover topics such as blended learning, effective leadership strategies, and privacy practices for academic organizations.

Now Available: Latest Core Data Report on Campus IT Environments

ecoghlan — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:50:40 -0500

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report has just been released. This report summarizes data for the past fiscal year collected from more than 950 colleges and universities about their campus IT environments, practices, and policies. Respondents represent all enrollment sizes, Carnegie classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions, providing a broad and deep view of the current IT environment in higher education. The full report can be viewed online free of charge.

Among the notable findings from the report are the following.

The percentage of top-level IT leaders at all reporting institutions who sit on the president’s cabinet increased nearly 2% over last year, to about 48%, but once again a higher percentage of community colleges reported this to be the case (about 63%, up from 59%).
Looking at the total number of centralized FTE IT staff this year compared to last year, there was a significant mean increase of 1.85 FTE staff for all responding institutions.
There was a significant leap in deployment of wireless security technologies since last year at all types of institutions, with an approximately 7% increase in deployment overall and about a 34% increase over the last two years.
There was an increase among all respondents in offering many kinds of support to faculty in the use of IT in teaching and learning, with “faculty training on request” the most employed support mechanism, reported by more than 94% of respondents.

Southwest Regional Conference 2008: Participate as a Speaker

cluckett — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:42:49 -0500

The call for proposals is now open for the Southwest Regional Conference 2008, "Empowering Community Through Technology," February 20–22 in Houston, Texas. The program for this leading event in higher education IT will follow these tracks:

Empowering Our Teaching and Learning Communities
Leading the Charge for Change
Making IT Work - the Confluence of Technology, People, and Expectations
Corporate and Campus Solutions

Submit a presentation proposal. The deadline for submissions is October 10, 2007.

A related opportunity: consider submitting material for publication in EDUCAUSE Quarterly. EQ authors receive full editorial support and gain valuable exposure and recognition in a professional forum.

Tune In July 20: Establishing Who Makes the Decisions in IT Governance

cluckett — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:49:18 -0500

Decision making about IT can be confusing, especially in complex institutions such as universities that typically use shared governance approaches. Designing a simple and clear approach to IT governance increases effectiveness. In this July 20 EDUCAUSE Live!, IT Governance: Establishing Who Decides, Andrew J. Clark, a chief process architect at Syracuse University, will provide an overview of IT governance, including its importance and challenges, and will discuss how you can develop and use your own model. Those unable to attend can visit the archives after the event or browse EDUCAUSE resources on IT Governance.

EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference 2007. Summary:The CIO Perspective on Changes & Challenges-Opportunities for Collaboration

llarsen — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:59:39 -0500

Summary:
Closing General Session

2007 Southwest Regional Conference

Friday, February 23, 2007

Panel: The CIO Perspective on Changes and Challenges: Opportunities for Collaboration

Moderator: Loretta M. Early, Associate VP for Information Technology, University of Oklahoma

Panelists

Pierce E. Cantrell, Vice President & Associate Provost for Information Technology, Texas A&M University
Jenifer Jarriel, VP for Information Technology & CIO, Baylor College of Medicine
Kamran M. Khan, Vice Provost for Information Technology, Rice University
Sam Segran, Associate Vice President for IT & CIO, Texas Tech University

Abstract:

IT leadership has always been important, but given the challenges facing higher education, it is essential for not only cost-effective operations but long-term strategic success. A panel of four Texas CIOs will discuss significant issues in higher education IT and provide practical examples of how they can be addressed effectively through collaborative initiatives. Examples will include approaches for identifying opportunities, engaging leadership, and building effective partnerships with external/internal stakeholders.

Summary:

Jenifer Jarriel spoke on relationships and communication strategies.

Soft skills, communication is “all” when you are working with other people and in collaborations. There is energy and success when communication is good. Otherwise things often fail.

Jarriel referenced “Collaboration Audit” from The Leadership Challenge; How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations by Barry Z. Posner and James M. Kouzes. This book talks about fostering collaboration. The Collaboration Audit is for a whole group of issues or a specific collaborative issue. It frames an individual’s or group’s ability to successfully collaborate.

Trust is important as well and Jarriel mentioned Stephen Covey’s new book and his belief that trust, speed, and cost are factors in high performing organizations. If you have low trust there is low speed and therefore more cost. When we listen to others, it must be done in the framework where we trust and respect people in general and our collaborators in specific. It is helpful to listen attentively as the better listener you are, the better they will listen to you in return. (Stephen Covey - http://www.stephencovey.com/)

Another point for good communication is to have clarity of your goals. You can’t succeed if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. And we need to know how will we know when we’ve reach the goal.

We must rely on each other to make all successful. Therefore good trust and communication is vital to the process.

Jarriel said we must give credit for other’s ideas and work. She suggest using “we” not “I” in conversations as this covertly engages people so they understand they are a part of the activity/process and share credit.

Another guideline was to treat every relationship as if it is a life-long relationship, even if it is not. This is a good way to develop the best relationships regardless of the time it will be active.

It is important to share information. Everyone needs to be fully aware. No one likes to be kept in the dark about a project or issues or to be in advertently surprised by information they should have been aware of in their work.

Jarriel also suggested that it is important to relate to others with different backgrounds, perspectives, expertise, etc., because we need diversity and dialogue to form the best ideas and make the best decisions.

Her closing points were:

Build the relationship before you need it.
Communicate to understand – not just be understood
Hearing isn’t listening
Make every interaction a positive one
Pay attention to your actions, they speak louder than words.
Choose the right communication channel
Blended communication plans are very necessary

Pierce Cantrell spoke on IT Governance

Cantrell opened his remarks with four questions.

Who makes which decisions?

Who provides inputs and analyses issues?

Who implements the results of the decisions?

Who settles disputes when there is no clear consensus?

--producing timely decisions, responsible actions, and reasonable results

IT governance is on the “top ten list” of issues to campus leaders.

The EDUCAUSE Core Data shows that we get input from all most all groups on our campus.

But Cantrell asks, Do your campus community and administration understand your IT Governance structure?

Does the CIO sit on, or interact regularly, with the executive cabinet, provost, deans, and department chairs?

He suggests that it is important to focus beyond the individual and to be able to work on an informal level with people at these levels as well as others on campus.

What kinds of advisory groups are in place on your campus and how effective are they?

He says that there is more success in focused advisory groups than those without a specific mission. Each IT organization needs to open up dialogue with groups that will advise and provide input into the work of the IT unit. Some advisory groups might be:

IT Steering
Instructional Technology
Classroom Technology
Student Computing
Research computing
Administrative Computing
IT Policy
IT Security
Networking

Cantrell notes that the partnership between central and local IT is an important element to be considered in IT governance issues.

Sam Segran talked about Security and Data Management Issues

Each issue has campus partners that the IT unit must collaborate with in resolving the issue.

Issues	Partners
Illegal downloads and p2p issues	Housing, student judicial, student affairs.
Credit card transaction servers and payment card industry security standards	Senior administration, comptroller, VPs, Deans, Department heads, Campus IT Staff
Worms, viruses, Trojans, hackers, etc	VPs, Deans, Department heads, campus it staff
Server, Desktop and application administration	VPs, Deans, Department heads, campus it staff

IT can only control so many things so you have to work with others to resolve issues. Segran asked, Where can we collaborate to make things happen for safe computing?

The major component for collaboration is TRUST and so you should have an advance coordinator who starts the trust process.

Issues	Partners
Social Netware, Anonymous feedback forms, etc. (Esp. University Hosted)	VPs, Deans, Department heads, campus it staff
Ability to Audit IT activity to meet mandates	VPs, Deans, Department heads, campus it staff
Data, data Everywhere – spring cleaning	VPs, Deans, Department heads, campus it staff
And now the data on mobile devices….	Everyone has a laptop or computer or other mobile device

Kamran Khan discussed Digital Natives and the Millennium Generation: Culture and Habits

Today’s traditional student has grown up with technology we hadn’t dreamed of and the ‘Net is their bloodstream. Some of those technologies are:

IM – multiple conversations, wireless devices
MP3 players – iTunes and more
Papers online – listening to lecture notes (iPods), posting papers online
Notes on blogs and wikis/downloading class notes
Web sites, cell phones/PDAs and location
Collaborative social and learning communities
Social networking – Myspace and Facebook
File and music sharing
Google search, computer games and much more

There was a time when the IT unit controlled the students’ technology but that is not the case now. Now it’s a new model where they provide their own technology and many of their own services. Khan said that Rice is building infrastructure that will support the students’ needs but this infrastructure is not layered and another business model is needed. Some of the technologies that the students’ “bring with them” includes:

Digital video – You Tube
Email messages
Web browsers
Portals
On-line shopping
Xbox, rough wireless routers, Tivo and HDTV
Roaming and ubiquitous access
Downloading “new and future” revenue based subscription services
Computers are “not protected” – virus
Second Life – Second What?

For IT units the learning curve is constant. Khan suggest that we should look at what’s happening K-12 to know what to prepare for in the next years.

He noted that kids speak a different language and we need to know that language in order to collaboratively work with them to provide the infrastructure and campus services that they need.

Q&A

Q: An attendee noted that it is easier to manage communications and collaborations within an organization but asked about managing institution to institution communication and collaboration

A: Research types figure out what they need and because of the need will collaborate. You should leverage contacts as best you can in order to make relationships that can be used when needed. You need good interactions with your peers/colleagues and good relationships with community organizations as well.

Q: Another question centered on the inability to compete with Google and similar services but expressed the need to be able to offer a controlled environment for students.

A: Khan said that you need to know what your core services are and what can be outsourced – students are there anyway. We have to know what risk we are taking, or might be taking, and factor that into your decision process. He said that we need to understand the WHY/WHAT the client wants/needs, and decide if it something we need to be doing or if it can be provided by another organization or service. Some institutions have jumped on Google right away while others have a list of questions that still are not answered.

Alternately, we need to put our minds together and decide if we need to collaborate among our institutions to provide a new service. Few institutions can afford a ‘director of technology assessment’ to look into these new technologies.

The key message of the CIOs was to not lose the focus of why we are here – teaching, learning, and research.

EDUCAUSE Enterprise Conference 2007 Takes a Broad Look at IT's Role in the Institution

cluckett — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:35:18 -0600

The 2007 Enterprise Conference—a small, specialized event for leaders and managers of administrative and enterprise IT in higher education—will be held May 23–24, in Chicago, Illinois. View the program and register by April 25 to save money with low, early-bird rates.

The conference will focus on the following topic areas:

Challenges Where IT Can Make a Difference
Project and Change Management/Centralized Services
Security/Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity
Running the Organization
Policy and Governance

View the list of speakers, who will address pertinent topics such as data privacy in higher education, the changing role of enterprise systems, federated identity management, assessment and accreditation challenges, and disaster recovery planning in breakout and plenary sessions.

Browse EDUCAUSE resources on Disaster Recovery Planning, Security Management, IT Governance, and Change Management.

Important Announcement: EDUCAUSE-Sakai Statement on Blackboard Patent Pledge

cluckett — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:31:55 -0600

Since early November 2006, EDUCAUSE has been engaged in ongoing discussions with Blackboard regarding their assertion of patent rights and the concerns raised in a letter to the Blackboard leadership [PDF 38.9 KB] EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins sent in October on behalf of the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors. Other groups, including The Sakai Foundation, have also been engaged in discussions on this matter.

Today, February 1, 2007, Blackboard announced a non-assertion pledge that directly emanates from these discussions. The boards of directors of EDUCAUSE and The Sakai Foundation have agreed to and have issued a joint statement [PDF 41.2 KB] about this pledge.