WASHINGTON: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has boosted its reliance on unclassified data — including for projects that normally would utilize classified sources — in part to maximize telework forced by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, says NGA Director Vice Adm. Bob Sharp.
“We are taking full advantage of commercial products and commercial imagery, and revising some of our workflows, so that we can start to do some of our mainstream work at the unclassified level,” he told a webinar sponsored by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) today. (USGIF sponsors the annual GEOINT conference, this year planned for April 27-29 in Tampa. Sadly, it was cancelled due to the pandemic.)
Sharp explained that, in some cases, this means simply using unclassified data to develop analyses, but in other cases it means starting with unclassified information to get projects going and adding in additional information later to flesh the analytical work out at the classified level. This, in turn, allows NGA analysts to continue to be productive while working at home where few can access to classified computer networks.
“The big change for us was pushing a lot of people out of the building,” he said, “and then taking some effort to connect those individuals. And so we completely revamped our unclassified infrastructure and our folks did a miraculous job in upgrading our capabilities by increasing bandwidth available.”
And, he said, he expects that much of this new way of working for NGA will carry on after the COVID-19 crisis is over.
“I think the big change that you’ll see is that some of those things are going to become the new norm for us, the new way of doing business,” he said.
Sharp said that while NGA has not been much involved in the domestic response to COVID-19, the spy agency has been asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “to help them look above and beyond COVID-19” at how to prepare for future international crises.
NGA has a long history of working with FEMA and other US agencies on non-military missions. For example, David Gauthier, NGA’s head of commercial operations, told me in a recent interview that the agency had contributed analysis to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in its support of Gabon’s effort to chase down illicit fishing and logging activities — that incidentally were tracked to Chinese perpetrators.
Sharp further noted that US combatant commanders — key NGA clients for geospatial information (GEOINT) — are making more and more use of unclassified sources and tools to allow them to share more information with international partners and the public.
NGA provides the Intelligence Community and military commanders not just with detailed maps of hot spots around the world, but also other sorts of analysis, such as about a country’s economic outlook, based on GEOINT. NGA defines GEOINT as “the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the earth. Geospatial intelligence consists of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information.”
As I’ve reported extensively, even before the current crisis NGA had been migrating toward development of a “hybrid architecture” that would allow it to take full advantage of the boom in the availability of commercial open-source data, including from commercial satellite systems.
At last year’s USGIF annual GEOINT event, Sharp introduced an updated NGA strategy, called 2025 Strategy 1.1, that focused the spy agency on predicting future events rather than simply explaining past events. He told the June 2-5, 2019 event that as part of that strategy, “continue to push the envelope on providing unclassified products that can help illuminate activities of concern and inform discussions important to maintaining long-standing rules-based international order.”
Sharp said none of NGA’s programs have been significantly slowed, or stopped.
“I will tell you that as we hit our mid-year point, we’ve hit our goals for obligating funds,” he said. We’ve actually been quite efficient.”
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