WASHINGTON: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is taking the pulse of industry to help the spy agency improve its ability to ingest raw sensor data from commercial sources and other government agencies and convert it to usable information for analysts.
The current goal is to have an improved version of the Data Transformation Services (DTS) system up and running on classified NGA networks by next February, according to the agency’s request for information (RFI). Interested vendors had until June 8 to respond to what an NGA spokesperson called a “market survey,” with a key requirement being that they show their skills in validating the quality of incoming sensor feeds.
“DTS converts raw sensor data into formats that are compatible with systems within the government,” the spokesperson said in an email. “In addition, it will provide metadata and corrections to improve data utility.” (Metadata allows data libraries to be more easily searched, for example.)
NGA hopes that industry can now bring to the table “advancements” both to the use of metadata and software used in tweaking the raw data.
The DTS program was launched in 2018, when NGA’s Research Directorate issued a $245 million contract to Booz Allen Hamilton to help it build the system, based on legacy software architecture provided by L3Harris (called GeoReplay).
“DTS is a software suite that enables the conversion of Mission Partner Data into a usable format for NGA to analyze for its purposes,” explains the RFI. “Remote Sensing support is also required to validate the quality and utility of data to optimize processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) tradecraft/Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for the user community.”
The NGA spokesperson said that due to classification, the agency could not specify what other government agencies are supplying geoint sensor information to the DTS system — but one can assume that it includes DoD and the CIA for starters, as both operate drones gathering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).
NGA also chairs the Intelligence Community’s new Commercial Space Council designed to rethink how data and analysis is gleaned from commercial space systems to help speed intel products to users. That group includes NRO, the NSA, the DIA and the CIA. Both NGA and NRO have been working for several years to pump up the use of open source, commercially provided space data to expand the reach of intel analysis — but also to allow easier sharing among various US and allied government users.
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