OUR PEOPLE THE NSG

Collaborative, Predictive, Responsive Analysis and Production

IMAGERY IMAGERYINTELLIGENCE

GEOSPATIALINFORMATION

Technology and Capabilities

GEOSPATIALINTELLIGENCE

The National System for Geospatial Intelligence

The National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG) is the combination of people, technology, policies, capabilities, doctrine, activities, and community necessary to produce geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in an integrated multi-intelligence environment in support of national security objectives.

The NSG Mission

To provide timely, relevant, and accurate geospatial intelligence in support of national security.

The NSG Vision

To provide geospatial intelligence—imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information—for planning, decision-making and action in support of decision-makers.

A unified community of geospatial intelligence producers and users, leveraging expert tradecraft, regional and functional expertise, and strength in numbers, in the delivery of timely, multi-source, multi-intelligence data and knowledge.

To afford easy access to geospatial intelligence databases and analytic expertise for all stakeholders, to include the public.

Tailored customer-specific geospatial intelligence, analytic services, and solutions.

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Functional Manager’s Perspective

The 2005 Statement of Strategic Intent is my vision for the near-term future and is intended to chart the course of the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG). The focus of the NSG remains on threats to our security—the global war on terrorism, impending global threats such as the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and the regional developments that threaten US national interests. This current document directly supports these focus areas, builds on the guidance in the 2004 Statement of Strategic Intent, and aligns with the strategic guidance outlined in the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) US National Intelligence Strategy and the Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Intelligence Planning Guidance. This document concentrates on the most pertinent areas, such as, interoperability standards, increased analytic depth, future workforce development, and improving the technologies needed to anticipate and meet the ever-increasing demand for timely, relevant, and accurate Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT).

The goals and objectives identified in my previous guidance are showing signs of fruition. We have responded to crises by deploying analysts to the “front lines” in order to meet our most urgent needs. We are developing an integrated capability to handle the future explosion in volume, velocity and variety of information, as well as to improve capabilities to integrate and analyze data and information by beginning to execute a plan to converge data architectures. We have improved and organized around multi-intelligence (multi-INT) collaboration. We have modernized our core training programs to include developing, for instance, integrated imagery and geospatial training for entry-level analysts, intermediate-level imagery analysis training for commands and Services, and Advanced Geospatial Intelligence (AGI) training.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Final Report of the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) all cite change as fundamental to combating the threats to our nation and the world. We face adversaries who operate in loosely associated groups, who employ unconventional methods of insurgency and terrorism, and who seek to employ WMD or other methods to produce catastrophic effects. However, we also continue to face conventional adversaries who are aggressively developing, acquiring, and employing technologies and techniques intended to neutralize the advantages we have had to date. On top of both, we have the traditional challenge of executing our vital day-to-day missions, such as safety in navigation, precision targeting, and military mapping and charting. Adopting fresh analytic approaches, collaborating with peers and partners, improving information-sharing, readily incorporating new technologies—these are the changes required of all of us to successfully meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

In line with my responsibility to provide direction to the NSG community concerning geospatial intelligence activities, I present the following goals for the 2005 Statement of Strategic Intent:

1. Establish an integrated, collaborative analysis and production environment that is responsive to and predictive of continuing and emerging global threats;2. Institute and expand an interoperable, strategically aligned NSG;3. Attract, develop, sustain, and engage a workforce with the skills and competencies required to meet current and future threats and challenges; and,4. Identify, develop, acquire, and deploy capabilities and technologies to anticipate and meet the ever-increasing demand for timely, relevant, and accurate GEOINT.

James R. Clapper, Jr.Lieutenant General, USAF (Ret.)

Director, NGA4

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Analysis and production are central to the NSG core, identity, and corporate mission. Implementing common standards, procedures, and processes will enhance integrated collaborative analysis and enable co-production across the NSG. Establishing a foundation and culture for horizontal integration—across disciplines, organizations, and nations—is essential to enriching GEOINT products and mastering our global intelligence challenges. Multi-intelligence (multi-INT) collaboration, converged community operation, and partnerships will yield the quality GEOINT crucial to effective future analysis and production, and succeeding against enduring challenges. The coordination of community source, analytical, technical, business, and governance factors will establish the future NSG analysis and production capability to meet customer mission-driven GEOINT needs. Consistent with Goal 1, the NSG will:

1.1 Focus aggressive and innovative collection and analytic techniques to understand the capabilities and predict the intentions of hard targets

Our current intelligence environment is characterized by adversaries who are increasingly aware of our capabilities and frustrate our ability to gather intelligence. The NSG must adopt new approaches to collection and analysis that overcome the physical, organizational, and cultural barriers our adversaries have in place. NGA will develop deeper and broader analytic capabilities, with significant focus on long-term analysis, critical thinking, problem solving, and independent analysis. We will foster new approaches to critical thinking through diverse assignments, professional development opportunities, and by encouraging analysts to examine problems from different perspectives, incorporating the widest sources, multiple tradecrafts, and regional expertise. NGA will task source and production analysts to work as partners to develop new collection and analysis strategies designed to circumvent even the hardest targets.

1.2 Enable flexible production approaches to deliver insightful, actionable GEOINT for each customer

NGA’s ability to help our customers succeed is dependent on our ability to support new, collaborative production approaches, involving ad hoc teaming, Multi-disciplinary Teams (MDT), Unified GEOINT Operations (UGO), Integrated Operations Centers (IOC), deployed analysts with strong reach-back ability, Communities of Interest (COI), and Communities of Practice (COP). NGA will lead and orchestrate these new, collaborative production approaches throughout the NSG, along with the use of traditional and non-traditional sources, methods, and tools, to create an integrated, operational culture that meets current and future intelligence needs.

1.3 Broaden access to all GEOINT sources and data, ensuring their availability and validity, to enable the production of quality intelligence

Paramount to quality GEOINT analysis and production is the ability to access all GEOINT community sources, data, and products within a secure, distributed environment. In combination with technologies that enable access, we are adopting service models that allow users to search extensive data stores, select varying levels of analytic support, share data, and add to the overall GEOINT knowledge base. Achieving proficient and responsive services will require reorienting and (in some cases) retraining the workforce to support service delivery.

Establish an integrated, collaborative analysis and production environment that is responsive to and predictive of continuing and emerging global threats1

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It will also require a repository that supports a transaction-based, customer-empowered, integrated information and knowledge environment. NGA will ensure that the NSG analysis and production competencies support the ability to work across all sources and disciplines, efficiently sharing knowledge with confidence. We will continue to mature source management analysis to ensure the availability, validity, and relevance of essential data. GA will proceed with development of the Geospatial-Intelligence Knowledge Base (GKB) as the central repository for GEOINT data and knowledge, ensuring that GKB holdings meet the rigorous quality and reliability criteria that analysts and decision-makers require.

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The leadership of the NSG and the responsibility for its coherent and effective functioning reside with the Director of NGA. As the GEOINT functional manager, the Director takes primary responsibility for ensuring that the NSG operates in a responsive, collaborative, and interoperable manner; and that it remains on the leading edge of GEOINT methods, procedures, and technologies in order to provide timely, relevant, and accurate intelligence. Consistent with Goal 2, the NSG will:

2.1 Promulgate policy, doctrine, directives, and Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) to provide leadership to the NSG enterprise

NGA will develop policies, doctrine, directives and guidance that promote cooperation, information sharing and collaboration among NSG members and the intelligence community. NGA will have its own guiding set of doctrine and directives aligned to NSG members and partners, building the foundation of a community of practice. The NSG will also work actively with the Office of the DNI and DoD to represent GEOINT services and capabilities in broader national policy and doctrine.

2.2 Define and develop GEOINT standards and metadata to forge and enable a collaborative, integrated GEOINT environment

Interoperability is essential to inter-agency information sharing and collaboration. The definition and promulgation of common GEOINT and metadata standards will enable increased interoperability at multiple classification levels and will help reduce life-cycle costs and technology risk. Common technical standards will improve and enable data processing, storage, transfer, and manipulation across multiple agencies and their associated IT systems. The NSG will define, develop, and adopt GEOINT standards in diverse areas, to include AGI, airborne imagery, motion imagery, data compression and data formats, metadata, collection and data management, and collaboration.

2.3 Expand partnerships and strategic alliances with national agencies, combatant commands, military services, civil agencies, industry, and foreign nations to increase NSG effectiveness in assessing and countering national and global threats

The ability to respond effectively to global threats requires skills and resources that no single agency or country can provide. The NSG must cultivate new and existing partnerships and alliances with a broad spectrum of organizations, industries, and nations. Such relationships will expand the inventory of capable and available resources and information; result in fresh ideas, cutting-edge technology, and new best practices for the NSG; and more importantly, ensure the most effective support to warfighters and other customers. The NSG will strengthen and expand its multinational, national, and industry collaboration and production efforts. These partnerships and alliances will be shaped by customer needs that result from increased customer engagement, enhanced customer communication and feedback, and projected customer needs and directions.

2.4 Push the Limits of Science to achieve technological breakthroughs

Leadership in the enabling sciences that underpin the NSG is essential to ensure significant technology improvements are possible. NGA will leverage intellectual capital and resources from industry, academia and the government to lead fundamental breakthroughs in remote sensing, geodesy, geospatial intelligence analytics and advanced geoprocessing that will create fundamental improvements in GEOINT capabilities, discipline and tradecraft for the NSG.

Institute and expand an interoperable, strategically aligned National System for Geospatial Intelligence 2

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An integrated, collaborative GEOINT analysis and production community requires a highly skilled, engaged workforce. Today’s NSG workforce is facing changes on all fronts—complex global issues, rapidly evolving tools and technologies, and shifting demographics and workforce expectations. As a community, we must plan for and invest in our most important resource—our people. We need to create an environment that fosters an involved and committed workforce led by strong, capable leaders. We must continually assess customer, workforce, and technology shifts and trends to project workload, workforce, and competency requirements. In dealing with these challenges, we need robust “human capital” strategic planning, with implementation plans that drive these strategies to action. Consistent with Goal 3, the NSG will:

3.1 Fully integrate human capital planning and tools into enterprise planning, programming and execution processes

NSG human capital strategies, programs, plans, and processes will be defined in NGA’s strategic documents and supported in program and budget plans. Human capital plans will drive identification and implementation of key people-related shifts required to support the NSG mission.

3.2 Leverage comprehensive strategic workforce planning to define and meet current and anticipated workforce requirements across GEOINT disciplines

As a community, we will implement an integrated strategic workforce planning process to identify critical occupations, and track competencies and capabilities against future GEOINT challenges. This planning will consider anticipated NSG requirements and technological advances to ensure the right workforce mix is in the right place, at the right time, with sufficient skills to accomplish our mission. Human capital plans will drive identification and implementation of key personnel shifts required to support the NSG mission. Recruitment, training, development, and knowledge management programs will be used to close workload, workforce, and competency gaps.

3.3 Implement competency standards and innovative and effective training and tradecraft development to enhance analytic depth and breadth

The NSG will use state-of-the-art training methodologies (web-based, virtual, traditional, and non-traditional) to develop entry, intermediate, and advanced analysts. We will shorten development time through internships, communities of practice, mentoring, and knowledge management tools. Performance expectations, minimum standards, and skill certifications will be established and followed. Creative recruitment and retention strategies will be leveraged to build and maintain a strong NSG analytic base in the face of a new generation of more mobile employees.

3.4 Ensure a steady stream of capable leaders who will be held accountable for guiding achievement of current requirements and shaping the NSG

Leaders in NGA and throughout the NSG will be recognized change agents, balanced risk-takers, and forward-thinking innovators. Demonstrating agility and adaptability, these leaders will drive transformation efforts across the NSG, and recognize and exploit improvement opportunities. Processes will be put in place to reinforce and reward desired leadership behaviors and results. The NSG will build the next generation of leaders through deliberate succession planning and leadership development.

Attract, develop, sustain, and engage a workforce with the skills and competencies required to meet current and future threats and challenges3

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3.5 Create and sustain an environment where the workforce is engaged, empowered, and energized to address ongoing and emergent needs

The NSG will build and sustain a diverse, value-driven, performance-based environment that fosters agility and flexibility. The NSG workforce of government civilians, military, and contractors will be unified in their understanding and support of the NSG mission, vision, and goals. The community will be adept at exercising expert knowledge, individually and collaboratively, to meet ongoing and emerging global needs. Analytic approaches and strategies employed will be more collaborative and problem-resolution focused.

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The challenges we will face over the next several years require us to stay at the forefront of technology and technological development. The NSG needs technology in the form of automated tools and processes and a modern infrastructure to contend with volume, variety, and velocity increases and to support our analysts’ needs. We need to remain ahead of our adversaries who are actively developing and employing technological capabilities intended to counter our advantages. We need to stay abreast of commercial developments, by quickly and effectively incorporating new technologies and data that offer viable alternatives for achieving our missions. We need to sponsor the development of unique capabilities not otherwise available through industrial or academic communities, for example, gaining knowledge and understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum, geodesy, and geophysics as they apply to intelligence and sensors. Consistent with Goal 4, the NSG will:

4.1 Continually adapt acquisition, contract management, and systems engineering processes to facilitate and support dynamic operational demands

Meeting the demands of an ever-changing operational environment requires acquisition and systems engineering processes that are tolerant of, and adaptive to, change. Although rightfully addressing risks associated with security, configuration control, and affordability, such processes must help, not hinder, the acquisition and integration of innovative technologies. NGA, as the acquisition authority for the NSG, will adopt best practices and invest the resources needed to speed the acquisition and insertion of technology and systems, while ensuring secure, uninterrupted operations.

4.2 Accelerate migration to a common, converged GEOINT architecture to meet the expected volume, velocity, and variety of data and to enable full integration of multiple sensor and platform data

Unlike today’s approach, the next generation of the GEOINT ground architecture must be capable of handling multiple sensors and sources regardless of platform or collector type. To achieve this objective, NGA will lead the elimination of stovepipes and promote the convergence of data management with supporting systems regardless of source, for example, National Technical Means (NTM), airborne, commercial remote sensing, and AGI. NGA will use the requirement for persistent surveillance capabilities as a catalyst to accelerate delivery of a common ground architecture, focusing initially on developing a converged architecture and defining and employing common standards.

4.3 Migrate to an all-digital, web-centric environment to facilitate timely collaboration and content creation, dynamic data exchange, with an aligned, service-delivery focus

The NSG will continue its progressive migration to an all-digital, web-centric environment. This environment will be characterized by a high state of readiness and responsiveness, dynamic data management and content creation (embodied in the GKB), and multiple service models (self-, assisted-, and full-service). Collaboration among geographically dispersed analysts and users within the NSG and from various intelligence disciplines will be critical. We will continue to forge this transformation through on-going investments in integrated data acquisition, automated information generation, collaborative exploitation and analysis, legacy and heritage system migration, increased foundation data holdings, distributed access to data stores, business process improvements, and information assurance.

Identify, develop, acquire, and deploy capabilities and technologies to anticipate and meet the ever-increasing demand for timely, relevant, and accurate GEOINT

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4.4 Pursue advanced processing and exploitation tools and implement end-to-end information management to facilitate increased data production and analysis, and to ensure data availability and accessibility

NGA will seek automated tools and processes for use throughout the NSG that will maximize the ability to effectively use increased data volumes, exploit the variety of data, and free the analyst to focus on intelligence analysis. We will develop or acquire tools for data and feature extraction, change detection, target cueing, tracking and recognition. We will develop or acquire tools that support smart filtering, prioritization, retrieval, fusion, and visualization to better integrate multiple sources of data. We will set specific goals and timetables for delivery of full-stream processing capabilities that capitalize on the full electromagnetic spectrum. Ensuring predictive, timely, relevant, and accurate GEOINT also requires management of data and processes throughout the life cycle of that information. We will begin instantiating information management service models (self, full, and team) and processes; develop needs brokering, needs satisfaction strategies and corresponding customer satisfaction assessments; develop foundational processes to enable throughput management; and begin defining information management occupation specialties.

4.5 Accelerate the acquisition and expansion of persistent surveillance operational capabilities and concepts to ensure effective and sufficient monitoring of adversaries and their environments

Persistent surveillance—an integration of NTM, airborne, commercial remote sensing, and AGI —currently represents the best opportunity for assured monitoring of entities and environments with sufficient frequency, continuity, accuracy, precision, spectral diversity, and data content to obtain desired information, even in the presence of denial and deception. NGA, in collaboration with NSG members, will identify end-to-end standards to ensure a common airborne framework and interoperability; develop CONOPS and appropriate joint policies and processes to enable effective working relationships; develop a persistent surveillance architecture that allows for cross-cueing and collaborative sensor collections with sufficient frequency, continuity, accuracy, precision, and spectral diversity to obtain actionable and predictive GEOINT; and invest in capabilities sufficient to store, manage, and exploit airborne data.

4.6 Expand efforts to implement a robust, scalable infrastructure sufficient to meet the expected volume, velocity, and variety of data

Few of the goals and objectives outlined in this document are achievable without an infrastructure capable of scaling to meet anticipated capacity demands and unforeseen surges. We will continue our recent efforts to implement a modern, managed infrastructure that enables data on demand throughout and beyond the NSG, and is capable of surviving and recovering from any disruption of service, including cyber and physical attacks. We will ensure the security of the infrastructure and data through improved technologies, policies, practices, and techniques.

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Moving Forward

The goals and objectives I have identified in this 2005 Statement of Strategic Intent reflect the new approach to “national intelligence” defined by the DNI and the direction being outlined by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Achieving them over the next five years will require a concerted effort on the part of NGA and the NSG community as a whole. It will require adapting and realigning to new ways of doing business, adopting and complying with accepted standards and guidance, and most importantly, embracing change and accepting risk as fundamental to remaining vital and relevant. In doing so, however, we will help lessen the gaps in our knowledge, add more breadth and depth to intelligence analysis, and increase our future technical capabilities. Our future investment priorities will reflect the goals and objectives in this document. We will chart our progress through core performance areas that gauge not only our success in achieving the goals and objectives, but also their effectiveness in helping us succeed in our respective missions.

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