February 3, 2011 

Mr. Patrick Gallagher, 

Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Co-Chair, National Science and Technology Council's Sub-Committee on Technology. 

Subject : Effectiveness of Federal Agency Participation in Standardization in Select Technology Sectors 

for National Science and Technology Council's Sub-Committee on Standardization [Docket No. 

0909100442-0563-02] 

Dear Mr. Gallagher, 

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is very pleased to provide comments on the Federal 

Register Announcement [DOCID:fr08de10-46] - Effectiveness of Federal Agency Participation in 

Standardization in Select Technology Sectors for National Science and Technology Council's SubCommittee on Standardization [Docket No. 0909100442-0563-02]. 

The NGA Mission is “To Provide Timely, Relevant, and Accurate GEOINT2

 in support of National 

Security.” In support of its mission, NGA, and its predecessor agencies; the Defense Mapping Agency 

(DMA) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), has been a unique leader in the 

development and promulgation of GEOINT Standards3

 throughout the Department of Defense (DoD) 

Geographic Information and Geospatial data community.. Early on, the standards developed were 

military in nature and defense-centric and were known as Military Standards (MIL-STD). With the 

adoption of the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA) of 1995 and Public Law 

104-113, NGA leadership issued policy that directed the development, promulgation, and adoption of 

GEOINT standards developed consistent with NTTAA. 

In 2005, NGA established the Geospatial Intelligence Standards Working Group (GWG), based on DoD 

Directive 5105.60 (revised July 29, 2009) & NSG1

 Directive ST 8100, to support the Director NGA’s 

responsibilities as GEOINT FM across the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG). Through 

these policies, the GWG is formally recognized as a Joint Technical Working Group under the DoD IT 

Standards Committee (ITSC) and Intelligence Community Enterprise Standards Committee (IC ESC) and 

recommends GEOINT standards for the DoD IT Standards Registry (DISR) and Intelligence Community 

Standards Registry (ICSR). The standards registered in the DISR and ICSR are acquisition binding for 

the DoD and IC Community. The GWG is recognized as an official DoD GEOINT standards Community 

of Interest (COI) and the GEOINT community forum for the coordination and development of 

DoD/Intelligence Community positions in GEOINT standardization. Today, the GWG membership 

includes 26 voting member U.S. Government Organizations (primarily the Military Services and the 

Commands) and 8 Associate (technical advisory non-voting) member organizations including civil 

government, academia and international partners. 

Today, through the work of the GWG, over 80% (and increasing) of the GEOINT standards cited in the 

DISR and ICSR by the GWG have been developed using public/private standards partnerships with 

organizations such as the International Standards Organization Technical Committee 211 (ISO TC211 – 

www.isotc211.org ) – Geographic Information-Geomatics, the American National Standards Institute 

International Committee for Information Technology Standards (ANSI/INCITS), and the Open Geospatial 

Consortium (OGC – www.opengeospatial.org). Through active participation in these organizations, NGA 

is able to highly leverage the knowledge, skills, and talent of the broad geospatial community for the 

development of standards that enable information, data, and service interoperability across today’s 

technology. Standards developed through the public/private partnership 1) Reduce technology risk by 

aligning industry around standards of mutual interest, and allowing industry to develop these standards 

with their own resources; 2) Improve choice in the marketplace by influencing the development and 

adoption of standards that have been built out in the market in a growing list of commercial products. 3) 
Mobilize new technologies by facilitating rapid integration of technologies and information into systems, 

enterprises and services via open standards. 4) Enable the extension of legacy systems to 

interoperate with new technologies by adapting these systems to leverage standard interfaces and 

encodings and 5) Reduce overall system lifecycle costs by reducing or eliminating custom integration 

through the use of open standards Many of these ISO TC211 and OGC standards are further profiled to 

best fit a particular application environment or requirement by communities such as the Defence 

Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG). 

In summary, standards developed through these public/private partnerships are changing, for the better in 

effectiveness and efficiency, the way NGA meets its mission. NGA would welcome the opportunity to 

brief the National Science and Technology Council's Sub-Committee on Standardization on the work of 

the GWG. For more information on the GWG, see (see http://www.gwg.nga.mil/). 

Please do not hesitate to contact me for further information. I can be reached at 

email:Gregory.E.Black@nga.mil, phone: 703-814-4509 

1

National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG): A unified community of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) experts, producers 

and users organized around the goal of integrating technology, policies, capabilities and doctrine to produce GEOINT in a multiintelligence environment 

2

GEOINT: “The exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical 

features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. GEOINT consists of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial 

information.” 

3

GEOINT Standards: Standards that consist of technical specifications or other precise criteria to be used consistently as rules, 

guidelines, or definitions of characteristics of GEOINT to ensure that materials, products, processes, or services are fit for the 

analysis and visual representations of physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth.