Changes and Challenges at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Speaking at the Intergraph 2010 user Conference, Paul Weise, the Chief Functional Manager, and Director, Office of Geospatial Intelligence Management for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) address the challenges associated with coordinating a national system for geospatial intelligence.

There are a number of changes in the GEOINT community and at the NGA. Vice Admiral Murrett has stepped down and Letitia Long is the new NGA chief. Former NGA chief and deputy undersecretary for defense intelligence at the Department of Defense, Jim Clapper, is the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Both have specialized and knowledgeable skill about GEOINT activities.

Weise said that so much of GEOINT is done in a crisis situation.  "Efficiency is not the measure of how you address a crisis; it’s the response time that matters… It creates a challenge for managing these situations." And the NGA had become very effective at supporting crisis situations. Howe was this accomplished? "The approach that has been taken since 9/11 is to ‘throw money at it.’ Now, the money is drying up," said Weise. The Secretary of Defense has said “enough is enough.” Weise said they are about to take a ‘meat axe’ to many DoD programs. "Since the money is drying up we need to work smarter," said Weise.

To accomplish more with less, Weise said that state and local governments as well as private companies will become a critical part of the national GEOINT community that includes federal organizations, combatant commands and the intelligence community (IC).

NGA’s functional management is concerned with improving collaboration and coordination across the DoD, IC and International Partners and Weise acknowledges the responsibility of publishing their data standards is what many are waiting to understand and know. He pledged to work with the commercial industry and academia and international partners to identify and embrace promising technology and architectural standards.

One point of contention for Weise: Full Motion Video (FMV). He said that the UAV’s were already flying in Afghanistan and Iraq before a strategy could be put in place for the entire life cycle for the system (archiving, collecting, storing, and analyzing the data). Too many owners of FMV with each one of them having a different training curriculum. Very little had been done in coordinating the many agencies and combat commands that utilize UAVs and FMV, but Weiss believes that is changing but late in getting out ahead of this issue.