benefits from its products would aid ASP in targeting its limited resources to reach the most appropriate user communities.

RECOMMENDATION 5: To ensure the program’s success in facilitating effective partnerships between NASA and users of NASA products to generate societal benefits, ASP should

1. directly engage with a broader community of users—not just federal agencies;

2. add rigor to performance metrics;

3. evaluate the number and focus of its applications areas;

4. improve the transparency and documentation of the process by which a partner agency engages the broader community, including clarification of the partner agency responsibilities in realizing the shared goal of benefits to society; and

5. clarify and broaden its policies regarding productive relationships and collaborations with the private sector, including but not limited to remote sensing data products.

This recommendation derives from Conclusions 5 through 8.

ASP’s emphasis on developing federal partnerships for NASA, in effect since 2001 when ASP was established in its current structure, should be expanded to include partnership development with the many potential nonfederal users of NASA products. While similar conceptually to the broad user base with which NASA Applications programs communicated prior to 2001, this committee recommends in these new engagement efforts that ASP expand and build upon its current structured approach, as outlined in the 5 points above, to ensure that users generate effective and innovative applications of NASA data to achieve societal benefits.