For the management of large technology programs the integration of heterogeneous and distributed technology information is required, and is feasible with modern information technologies. Heterogeneous information involves diverse data structures in structured databases, and unstructured information stored in spreadsheets, word processing documents, presentations and other formats used for human analysis and communication. In the end, it is humans who make management decisions, so this is not just an integration challenge, but also a challenge of composing information from heterogeneous sources for use in human communication and decision-making.

A key to addressing the data heterogeneity issue is the adoption and enforcement of standards across information systems. While XML is clearly emerging to be the lingua franca for databases and internet systems, it is encouraging to see the enforcement of standards even at the level of Microsoft® Word and Microsoft® PowerPoint® documents. For instance in the NASA enterprise the new ESR&T3 program has explicitly specified the requirements and formats for monthly project reports. Each project is required to submit a monthly progress report, in accordance with its approved project plan or contract Statement of Work, that provides information on the progress of the project during the previous month, in the areas of technical accomplishments, status against schedule, spending, performance against Earned Value Management metrics, planned activities for the following month, and other information pertinent to the tracking and management of the project. The formats have been specified for Word and PowerPoint documents which will be the reporting formats for this program.

The key capabilities that thus must be incorporated in an effective program management information system for an enterprise such as NASA are summarized as follows:

• Integrating information from heterogeneous technology databases in a consistent manner, for example project, program and enterprise-level technology databases; past, current, and future technology databases; technical, managerial and financial databases.
• Composing analyses and reports from heterogeneous technology databases in support of diverse technology management processes, such as gap analyses, technology assessments, and technology roadmaps; and, historical problem/failure trend reports, bug/requirements tracking, concept/feature tracking.
• Communicating technology information among diverse technology development stakeholders and technology database systems in order to assess data pedigree and support effective decision making for diverse organizational processes, such as project and program management, internal and external reviews, intellectual property and investment management, gap analyses and technology forecasting; and diverse database systems.