The Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO), Code 606, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) was formed in January 2005 as a result of the transformation of the separate Earth Sciences Directorates (ESD) and Space Sciences Directorates (SSD) into a single cohesive Sciences and Exploration Directorate (SED) to better support the President’s Vision for Exploration. CISTO is a Directorate-level organization which serves as the focal point for Information Technology (IT) and computational services to support the research programs of the SED.

The civil servants and contractors of CISTO are committed to supporting NASA's vision for the future. CISTO supports the Agency by providing the science community with access to state-of-the-art high-performance computing and networking, mass storage and information systems technologies, and dedicated computational science expertise. These resources and expertise enable NASA-supported scientists to increase their understanding of Earth, the solar system, and the universe through computational modeling and processing of spaceborne observations. CISTO supports the Agency's empowering goals through the individual efforts of CISTO staff and a number of educational and outreach programs.

CISTO is composed of the Directorate-level Office and three functional areas: Networks and IT Security, High Performance Computing, and Information Science and Technology Research.

CISTO is also the Directorate’s interface with the Goddard Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Center IT organizations (Code 700) regarding information technologies such as IT security policy, implementation and services; Enterprise Architecture development and compliance; strategic IT investment planning and management; and appropriate implementation of NASA and GSFC IT policies and initiatives to ensure Directorate compliance. CISTO also develops strategies to optimize cost-effectiveness in the utilization of information technologies in support of the Directorate’s mission.

The CISTO Office includes the project office for the Computational Technologies (CT) Project of the Earth-Sun Systems Technology Office (ESTO). CT is sunsetting, but since 1992 has carried out a technology development program with the goal of demonstrating the power of high-end and scalable cost-effective computing environments to further our understanding and ability to predict the dynamic interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting the Earth, the solar-terrestrial environment, and the universe.