Editor’s m

essa

When we think of legendary customer service, 

the usual suspects come to mind – Amazon, 

Zappos, Disney and other commercial 

enterprises. Government agencies rarely pop 

up on their own as good examples.

The federal government is driven to deliver 

superior customer service, however; it’s just that 

the stories can be more difficult to spot and are 

often much harder to tell. That is especially true 

for an intelligence agency like ours. 

It is also true that we government folks don’t always think of 

what we do in terms of providing customer service. We use words 

like ‘capabilities’ and ‘requirements,’ and think in terms of program 

management rather than in value of program output.

But what better value can any organization provide than to strengthen 

the nation through support of its security interests? NGA, as a combat 

support agency, is a customer-service organization by its very nature! We 

serve the nation, our customer, by providing its leaders, warfighters and 

decision makers with critical information about where and when things of 

interest are happening in the world. 

We are built for customer service. Our challenge is to evolve and 

maintain the mindset of customer service.

So how does a government agency like NGA nurture a customerservice mindset among its workforce? It starts by recognizing the many 

ways the agency currently serves customers. Articles in this issue focus 

on how the agency provides geospatial intelligence to its customers at 

the speed of their need [page 20], empowers international partners to 

conduct GEOINT in their local arenas [page 26], and collaborates with 

other agencies to provide maps and charts of top quality and value to a 

host of customers [page 32]. 

Secondly, it works to ensure its workforce understands that customers 

increasingly have a choice of where and how they obtain services. While 

federal agencies never compete to provide services, they must nonetheless 

strive to keep up with standards of quality set within the larger 

community. A General Services Administration spokesperson interviewed 

for our cover story contends that public-sector customer expectations are 

now heavily influenced by standards of service in the private sector [page 

14]. She says it is only natural that GEOINT users expect a high level of 

service from the government, because they are accustomed to it from the 

commercial geospatial information providers who also serve them.

Finally, agencies such as NGA must actively train their workforces 

to have a customer-focused mindset. Through programs like Lead 

with your Customer and agency agility training, NGA is working 

to create a customer-centric culture [page 25]. It is also working to 

enhance the quality of its services by engaging approaches such as 

Lean Six Sigma [page 24].

In the final analysis, no one else can provide customers with the 

quality, scope and depth of our GEOINT services. That’s a customerservice story worth telling.

V/r,

Jeanne Chircop

Editor

We strengthen the nation 

through our command of 

geospatial intelligence

NGA Pathfinder promotes awareness and 

understanding of geospatial intelligence, and is 

published by National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency’s Office of Corporate Communications.

NGA Pathfinder is an authorized Department 

of Defense publication for members of the 

DOD. Contents of this publication are not 

necessarily the official view of, or endorsed 

by, the U.S. government, DOD or NGA. 

Articles in NGA Pathfinder may be reproduced 

in whole or in part without permission, unless 

stated otherwise. If reproduced, credit the 

author and “National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency, NGA Pathfinder magazine.” 

Reproduction of graphics, photographs and 

imagery is subject to the original copyright.

NGA Leadership

Director: Robert Cardillo

Deputy Director: Sue Gordon

OCC Leadership

Director: William Caniano

Chief News & Information: Don Kerr

Editor: Jeanne Chircop

Copy Editors: Dale Lehner

Christine Fennema

Designer: Craig Thoburn

Photography: Anthony Boone, Rob Cox 

and David Richards

Contact us

Send letters to the editor to 

Pathfinder@nga.mil

Telephone: 571-557-5400

DSN 547-5400

Approved for Public Release, 16-270.
FEATURES

14 The year of the custom

20 GEOINT Solutions

 Speed of n

26 Going the extra 10,000

 to serve custom

4 Know the Eart

6 Team NG

10 Viewpoi

18 Show the W

24 In

30 Telling Our S

32 Collaborati

34 Understand th

DEPARTMENTS
know t

eart

4 NG

The Arctic:

Greatness in i

By Gary E. Weir, Ph.D., NGA Historian

Photos courtesy of Vice Admiral Anatoli Shevchenko 
| know the earth |

Pathfinder 201

Editor's note: This article is an adaptation of material 

published in "Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian 

Submarines that Fought the Cold War" (Weir and Boyne, Basic 

Books, New York, 2003).

As the ice cover in Arctic regions recedes, long dreaded 

competition for political and economic advantage in the 

far north has begun. Given our agency’s authoritative 

knowledge of the region and our recent release of new maps, 

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency strengthens the U.S. 

position in the Arctic.

 American Arctic expertise runs deep, both above the 

surface of the ice and below it. The USS Nautilus (SSN-571), 

the world’s first nuclear submarine, saw the underside of 

Arctic ice via sonar as it completed the first submerged polar 

transit on August 3, 1958. Many submariners have visited the 

North Pole in the years since, including the USS Seadragon

(SSN-584), which collected oceanographic and hydrographic 

data there in 1960. Numerous accounts have appeared in 

books and other media. 

In nearly every case the first thing that captures the 

submariners has little to do with strategy, tactics or the 

advantage it might provide against an adversary. It is the 

environment – its quiet, its authority and its stunning beauty. 

The Arctic has a formidable universal appeal. Personal 

accounts of the region help us to understand it, and not all 

stories come from Americans. 

In February 2002 I sat in a Moscow hotel, across the table 

from Vice Admiral Anatoli Shevchenko, a former active-duty 

Soviet submarine commander of the Russian Navy. At one 

point in our oral history interview, he paused to tell me the 

story of the first time he took his Victor II class submarine, 

the K-513, to the North Pole in 1979. He explained with some 

emotion that he had wanted to experience the area explored 

by USS Nautilus and USS Seadragon. He had been determined 

to take his place in the exclusive club of submariners who 

had surfaced at the pole. The trip and the achievement 

became a rite of passage.

The K-513 set out for the Arctic Ocean from Zapadnaya 

Litza at a course and speed that placed the submarine at the 

edge of the ice pack August 24, 1979. After a week of careful 

under-ice navigation, Shevchenko informed the crew that 

the navigator had placed them in the land of Nautilus and 

Seadragon. They had arrived at the North Pole.

Finding a suitable polynya – a natural hole in the ice large 

enough for a submarine to pass through – Shevchenko began 

his ascent and continued to rise. Everything became strangely 

quiet once the reporting and ordering were completed. Only 

the boatswain’s voice, calling out the depth, broke the silence, 

“. . . depth 12 feet . . . the boat has stopped.”

Shevchenko said he could still clearly hear the last call 

in his memory. Smiling, he recalled turning to the senior 

officer on board, Adm. Golosov, and asking permission to 

raise the periscope. 

Nothing prepared him for this first glimpse of the polar 

region. He recalled that moment vividly:

I didn’t expect to see what I saw through the 

periscope! There was pure white and serene ice 

around the sub. There was a wonderful rainbow 

stretched through the eastern part of the sky, which 

was shining with all the colors as if it had multishade diamonds. It was gorgeous! Golosov went to 

the periscope. A minute after, having opened the 

hatch, I was standing at the bridge. I really wanted 

the crewmen to see this beauty, and then to report 

to the commander-in-chief on the surfacing. Having 

prepared the machinery and devices for the stopover 

in the polynya and the communication means for 

the report to the base, the crewmen had a chance to 

admire the pure arctic beauty, to feel the terrific ice 

silence, and to collect memories with their cameras. 

We had a meeting on the bow of the submarine and 

raised the Soviet and Naval Flag to the melody of 

the Soviet hymn. Then there were salute shots to 

commemorate the surfacing at the North Pole. The 

report on the surfacing of the K-513 was sent at 

1925 [7:25 p.m.].... At 2000 [8:00 p.m.] the men of 

the second shift went to the upper deck. The sun was 

still above the horizon, but the area changed daytime 

colors for darker and deeper ones, all the while 

keeping the greatness of its silence.

The crew took down the flags as darkness 

descended, and the submarine began preparations 

to submerge. Shevchenko had the hatch closed 

at 2130 [9:30 p.m.] and immediately gave orders 

to dive the boat. The crew of K-513 had spent 

two hours and 37 minutes they would always 

remember, on the surface, at the top of the world. 

Today, as modern vessels infringe on the silence 

near the top of the world, part of NGA’s mission 

will be to track them as closely as possible for 

threats or challenges. Another part will be to help 

monitor and preserve the remarkable environment 

that completely captured the Soviet sub-driver 

Anatoli Shevchenko on the bridge of his Victor II 

in the late summer days of 1979. 
NGA Salute

Staff Sgt. Mich

By Dale Lehner, Office of Corporate Communications

Tea

6 NG
Jacks' NGA internship has 

expanded his horizons by opening 

new possibilities for how he can 

serve once he returns to the Marine 

Corps. He will have to choose his next 

military assignment carefully to fully 

give back to the Corps the learning 

and experiences he has gained.

“I have gotten tons of knowledge 

here,” he said. “I have learned to 

work very independently – how to 

do a little bit of everything. I would 

be able to work in an area where 

there is not much support.”

When asked what his biggest 

take away will be from his time 

with NGA, Jacks had an immediate 

reply: “The amount I have been 

able to learn. It is humbling that 

we get to do this, to see what no 

Marine has ever seen before.”

Information about the NGA 

Military Service Intern Program 

may be obtained by emailing 

msip@nga.mil 

Marine Staff Sgt. Michael Jacks, 

an imagery analyst and Washington 

state native, now finds himself at 

home in the other ‘Washington’ – 

that of the National Capital Region. 

The region and lifestyle pace 

are different enough for Jacks, 

but he is also part of a first-ever 

program at National GeospatialIntelligence Agency. 

Jacks is stationed at NGA Campus 

East as part of the pilot running of 

the agency’s military service intern 

program. He is midway through the 

three-year internship. 

The NGA military service intern 

program provides experiences to 

outstanding non-commissioned 

officers so that they can obtain 

geospatial intelligence professional 

certifications through the GEOINT 

career advancement program. The 

MSIP is a collaborative effort that 

reaches across several NGA key 

components. Over a period of 36 

months, each intern will participate 

in approximately 1,000 hours of 

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

College coursework in GEOINT 

concepts, depth-area focus and 

leadership. They will also spend 

time in four key components 

within the agency.

The MSIP is individualized, 

giving interns the latitude to choose 

the areas (i.e., key components) 

they want to explore within the 

agency. Jacks had no expectations 

of what he would find as he 

‘stepped’ into NGA, but his drive 

to ‘learn new things all the time’ is 

being satisfied. 

“It’s crazy how much is going on in 

this building,” he said. And having 

the chance of “stepping around the 

areas and talking with people” was 

an eye-opener for Jacks,

“I didn’t know they did so many 

things here,” he said.

Arriving at the Springfield 

campus in September 2014, 

Jacks started in the agency’s IT 

component, working as a program 

manager in the expeditionary 

mission support team. The work 

had a familiar, tactical feel, as the 

unit supports deploying service 

members assigned to NGA. 

“It [being a program manager] 

was something I had never done 

before,” he said. “The learning 

curve was steep, but I learned a lot.” 

Jacks then moved to the agency’s 

maritime group to work with the 

littoral planning chart team. To 

him, the work pace was slow – near 

tedious – but with good reason. 

The team, which is part of NGA’s 

safety of navigation program, 

has the critical role of providing 

nautical charts to mariners. Because 

the team’s coastal maps, which 

include shoreline and water, are 

what Marines typically use, the 

assignment was ‘a good fit’ for him. 

He had used these maps before. 

What he did not realize was the 

amount of time and effort it takes to 

review and validate the ‘hundreds 

and thousands’ of pieces of 

information included on the maps.

“It is amazing how much time the 

analysts spend ensuring the charts 

are as accurate as humanely possible,” 

said Jacks. “The amount of time 

and level of scrutiny these charts go 

through before being released to our 

naval customers is phenomenal.”

At this writing, the sergeant is 

spending his time in the Marine 

Corps Departmental Requirements 

Office. The office acts as a 

clearinghouse for imagery requests 

coming to NGA from Marine 

units. Office staffers give their 

recommendations to the Analysis 

directorate for how to best fulfill 

each request.

For the last leg of his NGA 

internship, Jacks will experience 

providing imagery analysis at a global 

scale. In that capacity, he expects an 

increase in operational tempo similar 

to ‘being back in the Corps.’

| team nga |

Know a service member worthy of an 

NGA Salute? Send your suggestion to 

Pathfinder@nga.mil.

Pathfinder 201
warrior regiment in Quantico. Once 

in that regiment, he learned about the 

Operation Warfighter program. 

Operation Warfighter is a federal 

internship program established by 

the Department of Defense in 2006. 

Through it, federal agencies offer 

temporary assignments to service 

members convalescing at military 

medical centers in the National 

Capital Region. Service members 

are matched with opportunities that 

use both their military and nonmilitary skills, and thereby create 

productive assignments that are 

beneficial to both service members 

and their employers. 

Vanessa Werts, NGA Wounded 

Warriors program manager, believes 

in the importance of the initiative.

"Military members are trained to 

be mission-driven leaders from 

the very beginning of their career, 

focusing on their occupation until 

they know it like the back of their 

hand,” Werts said. “Imagine the 

contribution they bring to the table 

for any organization."

Bakarania started his internship 

with NGA in 2011. Because he 

was still in the Marine Corps and 

undergoing medical testing and 

treatment, his internship lasted 

longer than usual. 

“I learned a lot during that 

time, and I did not let my medical 

condition slow me down,” Bakarania 

said. Meanwhile, he completed his 

college coursework and earned 

a bachelor’s degree in computer 

information technology. 

Bakarania went from NGA to 

intern at the National Security 

Agency. While there, he was medically 

discharged from the Marine Corps. 

Because of his positive experience 

with the Operation Warfighter 

program, he accepted a full-time 

position with NGA in 2013. He 

The U.S. Marine Corps has a 

reputation for having some of 

the most demanding physical 

fitness requirements in the nation. 

But what if you had heart for 

the challenge but a rare health 

condition got in the way?

That’s what happened to 

Jagdishkumar Bakarania, or Bak, as 

he likes to be called.

Bakarania was always interested 

in engineering. While studying 

computer, mechanical and electrical 

engineering at the University of 

South Florida, he expanded his 

horizons by joining the university’s 

Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training 

Corps. It would prove to be only 

the beginning of his military 

career; he would experience every 

branch of the U.S. military, most 

prominently the Marines, before 

eventually settling in at the 

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency as a civilian employee.

With no known health conditions, 

Bakarania decided to explore the 

range of military opportunities 

beyond his college ROTC experience. 

All four military service branch 

recruitment centers were located 

in the same strip mall he visited in 

Brandon, Florida. 

“How I decided [which service 

branch to enlist in] was by saying, 

‘whichever office comes first, that’s 

the one I’m going to go with’,” 

Bakarania said. “And that’s how I 

became a Marine.”

Bakarania was able to thrive in the 

Marine Corps while continuing to 

pursue his love of engineering and 

electronics. After what he described 

as “three months of outstanding 

training at Parris Island,” Bakarania 

went to Marine Corps. Air Grand 

Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, 

California, where he studied radio 

electronics fundamentals and repair. 

He became a telecommunications 

technician upon completion of 

the training and was stationed in 

Okinawa, Japan, until eventual 

deployment to Iraq. 

Following his deployment 

Bakarania accepted a position as 

a maintenance instructor in the 

communications school at Marine 

Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, 

where he trained new lieutenants 

how to use and fix communications 

equipment. Bakarania recalls this 

as the time he had the most fun, 

working a hands-on job while also 

teaching students. 

It was then, in 2008, that Bakarania 

started noticing issues with his 

physical health. He remembers 

that his breathing pattern changed. 

He was wheezing, and he would 

fall behind while running during 

physical training. He saw a host of 

medical personnel – primary-care 

physicians at Quantico, neurologists 

at Bethesda Naval Medical Center 

and muscular specialists at Water 

Reed Army Medical Center. 

After months of exhaustive 

testing, his doctors diagnosed 

Bakarania as having a type of 

mitochondrial myopathies, a little 

known neuromuscular disease. 

What it means is that he experiences 

numbness and gets tired easily. It 

also takes his body longer to recover 

after physical activity. 

The Marine Corps extended 

Bakarania’s contract during his 

medical testing so that he could stay 

enlisted. After he was diagnosed 

with a physical disability, however, 

he knew it would be difficult to 

stay in the Corps. With his future 

uncertain, someone suggested that 

he talk to the wounded warrior 

recovery care personnel at one of 

the medical centers. Experts there 

recommended he go to the wounded 

Tea

8 NG

I am NGA: Jagdishkumar Bak

By Carling Uhler, Ctr., Office of Corporate Communications
currently works as an IT operations 

analyst in NGA’s Chief Information 

Officer – IT Services directorate.

“Bak’s commitment to customer 

service has a significant impact on 

the GEOINT mission,” said Richard 

Cowans, Bakarania’s supervisor, 

noting that his attention to detail 

has in the past de-conflicted two 

mission-critical systems being 

down at the same time.

Bakarania is currently pursuing a 

master’s degree in cybersecurity and 

plans to work at NGA for a long time. 

“I love the NGA facility, and 

there’s a lot of opportunity here,” 

Bakarania said. 

Bakarania also volunteers as an 

ambassador for NGA’s Wounded 

Warriors program and talks to 

potential candidates at job fairs, 

where he doesn’t mind sharing his 

story with anyone curious about his 

physical disability.

“You can put the program manager 

out there, but for us, it’s hands-on 

experience – wounded warrior to 

wounded warrior.... We talk to them 

and they can relate,” Bakarania said. “I 

know I’m limited on some things, but I 

have to say, I can still do this thing.” 

| team nga |

Pathfinder 201
vi

ewpoin

10 NG

of socio-cultural intelligence, 

including human terrain, human 

socio-cultural behavioral modeling, 

human factors, social media 

monitoring, human geography, 

patterns of life analysis and, more 

recently, activity based intelligence. 

Definitional quibbling aside, we 

must constantly rethink and 

redefine how geospatial intelligence 

can enrich the provision of a 

baseline understanding of activity 

and behavior and aggressively 

pursue innovation in the conveyance 

of insights into our adversaries’ 

intentions, motivations and decisions. 

national security. Understanding 

human factors and human 

geography is the first step to 

understanding and anticipating 

security threats. From Russian 

nationalism to Islamism to Chinese 

expansionism to the influence of 

strategic culture on military doctrine, 

socio-cultural intelligence remains 

a critical bridge for translating 

observations and insights about 

adversary capabilities and intentions 

into actionable intelligence. 

A dizzying array of terms exist 

to describe the focus and outcomes 

In response to increased 

requirements for socio-cultural 

information there have been 

numerous, albeit fragmented, 

efforts to collect data about humans, 

groups, activities, behavior and 

perceptions; to analyze that data 

using open-source methods, tools 

and techniques; and to report 

findings or conclusions focused 

on the actions or behaviors 

of both specific individuals 

as well as groups (i.e., clans, 

tribes, sects), entire regions, and 

seemingly non-geographic or 

global networks. Placing foreign 

military developments and 

innovations in context, 

and informing American 

policy options in response, 

is an underappreciated 

and often overlooked 

benefit of integrating 

socio-cultural intelligence 

into more traditional 

intelligence reporting. 

Socio-cultural intelligence 

must be treated as a critical 

baseline focus of intelligence 

production. NGA’s addition 

of human geography as 

a foundational GEOINT 

discipline is an important 

step in addressing collection 

gaps. Yet, as a nation, we have not 

provided the funding for human 

geography collection and analysis 

required to leverage available data, 

analytics and expertise. Too often 

the available resources for sociocultural intelligence collection and 

analysis fall between the traditional 

intelligence organizations or, because 

they are deemed unclassified or open 

source activities, are relegated to 

lower priority. 

This paradigm must change, 

and NGA is poised to lead the 

intelligence community in doing 

so. Human geography is the 

cornerstone of socio-cultural 

Editor's note: The views expressed 

in this article are those of the author 

and do not reflect the official policy or 

position of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, the intelligence 

community, the Department of Defense 

or the United States Government. 

The March 2005 report of the 

Commission on the Intelligence 

Capabilities of the United States 

Regarding Weapons of Mass 

Destruction, better known as the 

WMD Commission, concluded 

that America’s inability to 

discern crucial aspects of Iraq’s 

weapons program stemmed 

from failures to understand 

“the context of Iraq’s overall 

political, social, cultural, and 

economic situation.” 

A decade later, how far have 

we progressed? What stake 

does National GeospatialIntelligence Agency have in 

assessing that progress?

Certainly, American 

intelligence capabilities have 

vastly improved in the last 

decade. It is increasingly 

difficult for adversaries to 

achieve surprise when we are 

paying attention, are focused by 

senior policy-maker or decisionmaker interest, and have brought the 

requisite expertise, collection and 

methods to bear. When it comes to 

human geography or socio-cultural 

intelligence, however, additional 

work is required to advance the 

development and integration of 

relevant human geography ‘content’ 

we convey to our customers. This 

requires new analytic models 

and processes to integrate opensource data and methods with 

other sources to develop a deeper 

understanding of adversary 

capabilities and intentions. 

Socio-cultural intelligence is, 

and will continue to be, critical to 

Socio-Cultural Intelligenc

to National Security Policy By Robert R. Tomes
Robert R. Tomes, Ph.D., is s

proprietor of Liminal Leadership, L

adjunct professor of security studies at 

Georgetown University, and president

of the MapStory Foundation. Thi

article is adapted from “Socio-Cultural 

Intelligence and National Security,”

Parameters (Summer 2015). Dr. Tomes

can be reached for comment at 

tomesdc@yahoo.com. 

| viewpoint |

Pathfinder 2016

intelligence, and geospatially 

referenced human geography data 

remains a core GEOINT capability. 

A number of NGA initiatives have 

the potential to fundamentally 

change the future of socio-cultural 

intelligence collection and analysis. 

The current vision for NGA 

includes transforming GEOINT 

into the most open and transparent 

intelligence discipline and the 

most prolific user of open-source 

data, methods and services. Among 

the opportunities inherent in 

this vision is, for the first time, 

enabling analysts to leverage every 

relevant source through a GEOINT 

enterprise that privileges the utility 

of information over and above its 

source or level of classification. 

Initiatives such as GEOINT 

Pathfinder are necessary but not 

sufficient to usher in the cultural and 

enterprise-level changes required 

to enable NGA analysts to provide 

the deep context required for 

delivering customer consequence. 

The emerging GEOINT Services 

construct creates an unprecedented 

opportunity to integrate data, 

innovative sources, analytic services 

and visualization methods. 

The majority of relevant sociocultural intelligence sources are 

unclassified and difficult for analysts 

to access on their normal production 

networks. Engaging in the open is 

critical for the continued relevance of 

GEOINT. This requires incentivizing 

our analysts to collaborate with 

experts outside of the intelligence 

community and enabling them to 

search, discover and use open-source 

data from their desktops.

From both sources and methods 

perspectives, activity based 

intelligence and structured 

observation management provide 

important opportunities for analysts 

to provide GEOINT narratives that 

place observable events or activities 

into policy- and decision-relevant 

contexts, adding important ‘why’ 

and ‘what next’ information to 

baseline ‘what,’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ 

fact finding. We cannot ignore 

the need to integrate all available 

sources of socio-cultural intelligence 

into the ABI and SOM efforts. 

Additional work is required to 

assure that SOM efforts are indeed 

‘structured’ in terms of methods, 

data capture and discovery. 

Additional work is also required 

to integrate and socialize tradecraft 

for using what NGA often labels 

‘nontraditional GEOINT’ despite the 

widespread, accepted use of these 

same analytic methods in the opensource community. The inherent 

power of GEOINT is its ability to 

integrate and fuse all other data 

sources and analytic approaches into 

spatially and temporally relevant 

narratives that provide context. 

While the 2000s witnessed an 

increase in the open, unclassified 

resources available to help 

policymakers understand foreign 

cultures, movements and peoples, 

these sources were not considered 

as part of the baseline data 

collected and analyzed for defense, 

development, and diplomacy 

missions. Policymakers did not 

have access to the best assessments, 

data or experts available to inform 

intelligence analysis, estimates or 

policy formulation. In 2016, many 

of the open, unclassified resources 

for understanding foreign cultures, 

movements and peoples are still not 

considered as part of the baseline 

data to be collected and analyzed. 

Critical to the success of future 

socio-cultural intelligence programs 

will also be building data science 

and data analytics capabilities. 

Understanding how to leverage all 

of the data, to what effect and for 

which users is not a new problem. 

What is new, perhaps, are orders-ofmagnitude increases in expectations 

for fusing or integrating all of 

this data in a fashion that satisfies 

requirements for accelerated 

timelines, and more detailed and 

accurate predictions about complex 

events or trends. More automation 

in analytic workflows is a significant 

part of the solution. Quite simply, 

automation will enable analysts 

to spend less time finding and 

retrieving relevant information from 

disparate databases, and more time 

doing analysis to decipher what it 

really means.

NGA and its strategic partners 

are poised to fill the void. 

Essential for success will be to 

understand the full range of 

requirements for human-domain 

analysis and then to harness the 

technologies and methodologies 

necessary for meeting those 

requirements. We must do more 

than ‘map’ the human terrain 

in static PDF products. Sociocultural intelligence analysis is 

best conveyed through dynamic 

visualization services, multidimensional graphics and datadriven analytic methods. We 

are collecting huge amounts of 

data that can provide enormous 

insight when combined with 

appropriate analytic methods and 

visualizations. An important next 

step in the evolution of GEOINT 

is already underway – revamping 

NGA standard products and 

services to include analytic 

visualization services native to 

analysts’ desktops. It is not enough 

to add ‘visualization’ or ‘graphics’ 

staff to the editing and production 

workflow. We need analytic 

visualization experts with domain 

expertise and knowledge of 

customer requirements integrated 

into the analytic process. 
viewpoint

12 NG

Editor's note: The views expressed 

in this article are those of the author 

and do not reflect the official policy or 

position of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, the intelligence 

community, the Department of Defense 

or the United States Government. 

The National Photographic 

Interpretation Center, a predecessor 

to the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, shaped U.S. 

strategy throughout the Cold War 

and ultimately produced more 

intelligence community leaders 

than any other office. Success did 

not come easily, however; NPIC 

had to continuously work to ensure 

its position and grow its influence 

in the intelligence community.

More than fifty years later, NGA 

can still learn from NPIC’s early 

struggles to earn a proverbial 

seat at the intelligence table. The 

agency can benefit from nurturing 

some of the same cultural 

attributes as NPIC did to increase 

its capacity to serve its geospatial 

intelligence constituencies. Those 

attributes are most visible in 

the areas of workforce energy, 

expectations of effort and 

engagement with the IC at large.

A 

the 

By Jack O’Connor

Workforce ener

NPIC started as a gamble. When 

the idea for such a center was 

conceived in December 1954, no 

one knew if the U-2, an as-yet 

unbuilt aircraft with an untested 

camera, would be able to obtain 

intelligence over the Soviet Union. 

The Central Intelligence Agency 

nevertheless entrusted one of 

its aerial photography experts, 

Arthur Lundahl, with creating an 

organization to produce intelligence 

from U-2 film. Lundahl insisted, 

against some CIA resistance, that 

the new organization’s workforce 

be drawn from across the military 

services as well as CIA. 

From the beginning Lundahl 

knew his fledgling organization, 

which was originally known as the 

CIA Photographic Interpretation 

Division, would need to compete 

for influence and resources. He 

had to justify and compete 

for every position and every 

budget allocation from CIA. His 

decision to create blended teams 

and share management of the 

new organization among all the 

contributing organizations built a 

healthy competitive nature into his 

workforce. Healthy competition 

meant team members were 

constantly striving to improve and 

do things better.

What really fueled the 

organization’s initial success, 

however, was its youthful energy. 

Lundahl himself was not yet 40 

when given responsibility for 

establishing the center. He, in 

turn, consciously staffed his new 

organization with young people, 

because he anticipated hard, 

stressful and unceasing work.

Lundahl’s expectation came to 

pass when U-2 missions began. 

By January 1961, when the U-2 

program was in full swing and 

his organization officially became 

known as NPIC, its workforce 

averaged 29 years old. These 

early pioneers of the national 

reconnaissance business worked 

around the clock, and their efforts 

required extensive energy. It was 

energy fueled by fierce curiosity 

about Soviet secrets. 

Expectations of 

A young workforce provided 

energy and hard work, but clear 

expectations were needed to 

focus NPIC’s efforts. The idea of 

focused expectations began with 
Jack O’Connor is author of NPIC:

Seeing the Secrets and Growing 

the Leaders, a cultural history of the 

interpretation center published in 

2015. He retired from the CIA in 20

after more than 30 years of service. 

He began his career at NPIC a

later served at the National Imagery

and Mapping Agency and NG

He can be reached for comment at

jpkoconnor554@gmail.com. 

| viewpoin

Have an idea for a GEOINT or 

national security Viewpoint contribution? 

Send your query to Pathfinder@nga.mil. 

Pathfinder 2016

the very launch of the center and 

the establishment of blended 

teams. Lundahl clearly expected 

collaboration, and it developed 

naturally within the structure of 

blended teams. 

Another desired attribute – the 

ability to effectively tell the story – 

was ingrained as NPIC grew. The 

values attached to the discoveries 

from the search mission, the calls 

made after target comprehension 

grew, and the corrections and saves 

made by the support people all 

were reinforced by the storytelling 

capabilities within NPIC’s culture. 

NPIC’s performance 

expectations were reinforced 

by the expertise of its leaders. 

Lundahl himself was one of 

the best briefers in the IC. As 

NPIC grew, John Hicks, its next 

director in the late 1970s, created 

an internal imagery analysis 

school and a management 

development program for the 

agency. Rae Huffstutler, the third 

NPIC director in the mid-1980s, 

documented his expectations 

for success in the Competitive 

Evaluation process, described in 

the NPIC supervisors handbook 

and the NPIC employee 

handbook. Even still, Huffstutler 

used to tell young analysts and 

their managers that it wasn’t 

enough to just meet a supervisor’s 

expectations. He told NPIC 

analysts that they had to earn 

their ‘seat at the table,’ and they 

had to do that through satisfying 

the intelligence community’s 

expectations, answering the IC’s 

questions and solving or helping 

to solve its problems. In other 

words they must provide good 

customer service.

Engagement with 

The work done at NPIC was 

important only if it met the needs 

of the IC, according to Huffstutler. 

He insisted that all NPIC analytic 

products be designed to serve 

their customers. He supported 

an analytic initiative for video 

reporting. He changed the style and 

format of the reports to be more 

useful to customers, and he pushed 

the NPIC workforce to meet its 

customers and understand their 

intelligence questions. 

Huffstutler enabled NPIC 

analysts and managers to learn 

more broadly about IC needs by 

serving rotational assignments 

in all-source units in other 

agencies. He also obtained 

rotational positions in armscontrol staffs and in collectionmanagement organizations. 

The price of delivering 

customer support at NPIC was 

the expectation of providing 

analytic briefing and writing 

that anticipated and met 

customer needs. It was a high 

and unrelenting price, but NPIC 

analysts earned their seat at the 

IC table by supporting customers 

with new discoveries, knowledge 

of new issues and the burgeoning 

ability to track targets and issues 

with imagery.

More than 50 years later, NGA, 

the imagery interpretation agency 

that evolved from NPIC and 

related legacy agencies, has the 

same need for intellectual energy 

and hard work, clear performance 

expectations and engagement with 

the IC at large. NGA must continue 

to earn its seat at the table, and like 

NPIC, its cultural development will 

be key to its continued success. 

Did you

know

Thirty-five years after officially 

becoming the National 

Photographic Interpretatio

Center, NPIC became one o

several agencies to form the 

National Imagery and Mappin

Agency, which later became

NGA. Congress established

NIMA October 1, 1996,

blend imagery analysis with 

cartography, mapping and 

charting. The new agency 

merged together related 

capabilities from across the 

intelligence and defense 

communities. Follow NGA

Pathfinder throughout 2016 to 

learn more about our 20-year 

history serving the geospatial 

needs of these communities.
featu

14 .L

When National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency Director Robert Cardillo 

spoke at the International Consumer 

Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early 

January, it was a bellwether of change. 

The event marked the first time 

an intelligence community leader 

ventured into a truly consumerfocused venue to invite broad 

collaboration from the industry that 

supplies the world with mobile devices, 

GPS products and big-data analytics.

It also signaled Cardillo’s firm 

commitment to transforming NGA 

into a more customer-centric agency.

Th

Y

oh

o

By Jacquelyn Karpovich, Ctr., Office of Corporate Communications
| feature |

Pathfinder 2016

“We exist for our customers, so that 

our customers do understand the 

world, and then succeed because 

they have a deeper understanding 

than anyone else does,” said Cardillo. 

It was a well-timed statement. At 

the outset of 2016, an article on Forbes.

com billed this year as the “Year of 

the Customer.” 

Gone are the days of frustrating 

wait times, long lines or digging 

through outdated websites for 

contact information. Customers are 

smarter, connecting to companies and 

organizations in more ways than ever, 

and looking for tailored solutions 

delivered right to their mobile devices.

These shifting customer service 

trends aren’t just limited to 

commercial or hospitality industries; 

consumers want their federal services 

streamlined and efficient, as well. 

They want their tax returns directly 

deposited into their bank accounts. 

They want to register to vote and 

apply for a passport online. They 

want the ability to serve themselves 

according to their own schedules 

rather than waiting to be served by 

others who may or may not share the 

same sense of urgency.

The initial framework for 

emphasizing customer service 

within the federal government 

is rooted in the Government 

Performance Results Act of 1993. 

That act sought to “improve federal 

program effectiveness and public 

accountability by promoting a new 

focus on results, service quality and 

customer satisfaction.”

But a year before that, in 1992, 

President George H. W. Bush 

proclaimed a National Customer 

Service Week, stating, “If the United 

States is to remain a leader in the 

changing global economy, highest 

quality customer service must be a 

personal goal of every employee in 

business and industry.” 

Fast-forward almost a quarter of a 

century later, and customer service in 

the federal government has evolved 

far beyond a single, simple action, 

such as applying for a passport or 

filing a tax return. The concept now 

encompasses all the interactions 

a person has with an organization 

and is often referred to as customer 

experience, or CX. The U.S. General 

Services Administration’s DigitalGov 

blog defines an organization’s CX as 

something measured in metrics and 

sentiment around “overall experience, 

likelihood to continue use, and 

likelihood to recommend to others.”

Blog posts are only the tip of 

the iceberg when it comes to an 

increased emphasis on CX within 

the government. GSA also conducts 

extensive research on CX topics, 

produces a weekly CX newsletter and 

hosts a CX community of practice. It 

even conducts training and webinars 

through its DigitalGov University.

Customer experience is gaining 

a lot of traction now in the federal 

government for a variety of reasons, 

says Rachel Flagg, customer 

experience strategist in GSA’s Office 

of Citizen Services and Innovative 

Technologies, and lead of the 

government’s CX community of 

practice, which boasts a membership 

of 630 across 160 different agencies.

“People’s expectations are just 

changing so much,” she said. “We’re 

part of a larger ecosystem, and 

people expect the same level of 

service from government as they get 

from anyplace else. They expect to 

interact with us just like they do with 

Amazon.... Government has to bring 

that level of service.”

CX is a brave new world for the 

intelligence community. NGA is 

uniquely suited to venture into this 

territory, however; as it serves a diverse 

customer base across a number of 

security domains — from an aid worker 

supporting federal humanitarian 

efforts , to a soldier downrange, to 

an international counterpart, to a 

Capitol Hill policymaker. 

“While customer-centricity is 

well known in the private sector, 

what we’re doing here at NGA is 

leading the way for the intelligence 

community,” said Cardillo during the 

agency’s National Customer Service 

Week in fall 2015.

Charting the path ahead is NGA’s 

Xperience directorate, the only 

organization within the intelligence 

community established with a 

direct customer service mission. But 

all IC agencies essentially have a 

customer service mission, according 

to Christy Monaco, deputy director 

of the directorate. She notes that 

every IC agency is tasked to do the 

same thing – get insights, whether 

geospatial intelligence, signals 

intelligence, all-source or other – to 

their customers in time to inform 

their actions. 

“What we’re trying to do is build a 

customer-service ecosystem that allows 

us to have such exquisite knowledge 

of our customers that we can deliver 

to them the GEOINT insights that they 

need before they even realize they 

need them,” said Monaco.

The Xperience workforce is paying 

close attention to NGA’s customers’ 

behaviors and engagements as part 

of its focus on building better insights 

and better decision making through 

business intelligence. 

“We take behavior data from the 

Globe [NGA’s GEOINT customerfacing online presence] and sentiment 

data from our assisted- and fullservice customer engagements, and 

serve up to our internal customers 

[those in key components who 

produce content and services] those 

insights,” said Monaco. “We’re able 

to make business analytics decisions. 

That just helps us be better stewards 

of taxpayer dollars.” 

But business intelligence is not 

just creating better fiscal decisions, 

according to Monaco; it’s also 

saving the most essential currency 

in the IC – time.
f

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16 NG

“Our information and time 

advantage over our adversaries 

is not measured in days or hours. 

It’s often measured in seconds or 

milliseconds,” said Monaco. “Where 

we are able to, we need to be able to 

create that time advantage.”

Constructing a time advantage 

means looking at ways to better 

serve some of the agency’s closest 

partners and customers. To do that, 

Xperience has rolled out a number 

of initiatives over the last year. 

Among them was bringing together 

under the directorate many of the 

23 NGA Support Teams embedded 

across the IC and throughout the 

Department of Defense. Each 

of these NSTs has an Xperience 

customer account manager that 

provides a direct link for resolving 

issues and coordinating outreach. 

Additionally, as workforce 

demographics change, so will the 

nature of the agency’s customer 

service interaction. Xperience has 

created a team to explore what 

the future NGA user’s experience 

might be, even just five years from 

now, as customers are increasingly 

technology savvy.

 “A lot has been made of digital 

natives,” said Monaco. 

From a customer-service standpoint 

this means the agency will need to 

re-think how it delivers GEOINT, 

according to Monaco. Many digital 

natives have been working in the 

field only a short time, she says, and 

the NGA user experience needs 

to help those folks “have as much 

productivity in their early weeks as 

they do in their last weeks, no matter 

how much time occurs in between.” 

In addition to serving a growing 

number of customers who are 

digital natives, NGA is also 

pondering how digital natives can 

be hired and retained as part of the 

agency’s workforce, said Monaco. 

One of the Xperience directorate’s 

more unique techniques for evolving 

the user experience for the next 

generation involved crowdsourcing 

its latest strategy, NextX, from its 

own workforce, giving the digital 

natives already on staff a voice in 

future direction.

Monaco said Xperience leaders 

organized a number of internal 

engagements with their workforce. 

She reported, “And, we essentially 

said, ‘What do you all see going 

on in the world of customer 

service that you think will have 

applicability for us?’ ” 

This type of engagement to gather 

direct workforce input maps to 

what Flagg considers one of the key 

components of customer service – 

employee engagement. 

“It boils down to agency culture 

and supporting employees,” she 

said. “Engaged employees provide 

the best service.”

NGA has also started spreading 

its customer service message to 

the broader community. Through 

Xperience, it is spearheading a CX 

community of practice for intelligence 

agencies, with participants from 

the National Reconnaissance 

Office, National Security Agency 

and Defense Intelligence Agency. 

Participants acknowledge it won’t 

be easy, or quick, for the community 

to shift to a more customer-service 

mindset, but it is essential. With a 

nation to secure, they believe it’s 

crucial to get it right.

 Flagg believes it’s crucial for the 

government at large.

“No matter what the mission, 

the federal government has a 

responsibility to the public to provide 

the best customer service that we 

can,” said Flagg. “For the most part, 

we are a single-service provider. [For 

example,] it’s not like someone can go 

somewhere else and pay their taxes; 

they have to deal with IRS. To me, 

that makes it even more important 

that we get it right.” 

An expert’s advice 

for creating a 

good customer 

experience

Rachel Flagg, customer experienc

strategist in GSA’s Office of Citizen Serv

and Innovative Technologies and lead of 

the government’s X community of practice

offered up the following thoughts during a 

recent interview with NGA Pathfinde

Look to Private

Flagg reiterated that commercial 

companies like Amazon are really 

setting the CX standard: “In this day 

and age, people don’t care if you are 

Amazon or the federal government, 

or the mom-and-pop store on the 

corner; their expectations of service 

delivery are higher than ever.”

Agency Cu

Another lesson from the private 

sector Flagg noted as essential to 

good customer service is developing 

a supportive agency culture: “One 

of the biggest lessons learned is 

that a strong organizational culture 

really has a very clear impact on 

the bottom line and the service that 

your employees provide.” 

Embrace Transpare

Social media provides a public 

platform for people to voice their 

opinions, including what they love 

and don’t love about government, 

said Flagg: “Nobody is operating 

in isolation anymore. Everything is 

very transparent.”

Build Relati

What CX boils down to is creating 

good relationships, said Flagg: “It’s 

a trust – showing value, showing 

people that we value their time and 

feedback, that we are responsible 

stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
| feature |

Pathfinder 2016

Warfighter supprt in t

NGA’s presence in Iraq is by no means a recent 

development. Before the term GEOINT was coined 

and NGA existed, the agency's predecessor, National 

Photographic Interpretation Center, deployed a 

range of specialists to Iraq to support Operation 

Iraqi Freedom as early as 2003. By the winter of 2009, 

the number of NGA deployers had reached around 

100, and they were stationed at forward operating 

bases throughout Iraq. This level of detailed support 

continued until withdrawal of coalition forces in 

December 2011.

Since then, regional stability concerns have 

focused on the Syrian civil war and the expansion 

of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant operations in 

Iraq. As a result, the international community has 

shifted efforts to support the Iraqi government in its 

operations against ISIL.

In October 2014, in response to a growing regional 

threat, a combined joint task force formed to train, 

advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces. NGA deployers 

continue to support the task force plus a range of local 

organizations, including the U.S. Department of State, 

coalition partners and non-governmental organizations 

operating in theater. The team answers more than 100 

requests for information per month and produces more 

than 300 geospatial products per month.

The deployed team also works closely with NGA 

Support Team analysts at CENTCOM headquarters 

in Tampa, as well as with regional analysts at NGA’s 

various U.S. locations.

National decision-ma

Answering President Barack Obama’s call to strengthen 

coordination on issues in the Arctic region, NGA 

enhanced its Web services available to the scientific 

community on a publicly accessible website. 

One of these services is the Global Enhanced 

GEOINT Delivery tool, which provides more than 

1.5 million square kilometers daily of unclassified, 

global, high-resolution images to nearly 17,000 users 

worldwide. Available to users on the Internet, on both 

unclassified and secret domains, G-EGD allows users 

NGA content and services enable customers to take action within their mission spaces. By embedding geospatial analysts and providing online, on-demand GEOINT, NG

changed the ways its customers integrate the agency’s capabilities into their own operations. Following are examples of how NGA serves diverse customer

to download imagery on average within five hours of 

collection – without direct NGA support. Users can also 

transport G-EGD-derived imagery to other viewers or 

collaborative workspaces. 

According to Paul Morin with the National Science 

Foundation-funded Polar Geospatial Center at the 

University of Minnesota, the tool allows the center's team 

to "do more science, more efficiently, safer and cheaper." 

Prior to using G-EGD, Morin’s team took days and 

sometimes weeks to get the same high-resolution imagery. 

Today, the center's scientists, who support federally 

funded sciences in the Arctic and Antarctic, have access to 

near real-time ortho-rectified and raw imagery. 

"We can take stereo imagery collected on one day and 

have elevation models available the next morning," 

said Morin. “This is absolutely critical for us because 

we need that information to land planes safely, 

measure ice volume and predict sea level change."

Natural disasters and humanitari

In addition to its national security mission, NGA 

supports other government agencies and their 

representatives during natural disasters and 

humanitarian events. First responders, disasterrelief personnel and others supporting those 

missions use GeoQ, an open-source tool that 

provides a comprehensive operational picture 

within hours of an event. 

GeoQ, which can be accessed from any handheld 

or mobile device, collates disparate geo-data into one 

automated workflow and allows users to add context 

as the event and response unfolds. Through GeoQ, 

NGA has supported nearly 20 missions worldwide, 

including the 2015 Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in 

New York City. 

NGA works with partners in many fields to ensure 

development of tools and services that can assist 

humanitarian aid and disaster relieve. One of NGA’s 

academic partners, Pennsylvania State University, is 

considering using GeoQ for teaching operational best 

practices to its red cell team and students studying 

earth sciences.

Content contributed by Xperience Communications.

On the ground or o

NGA strengthens c
show th

e wa

18 NG

NGA supports unique customer
| show the way |

Pathfinder 2016

Office of the Americas and Disaster 

Preparedness saw the benefit of 

having me support the guard’s 

soldiers and airmen as they tracked 

events across the Washington 

Metro area.

The D.C. Metropolitan 

Police deputized more 

than 500 members of 

the District’s Army 

and Air Force National 

Guards in preparation 

for the event. Along 

with the police, the 

guardsmen supported 

Operation Roman 

Watch by helping with 

crowd directions, traffic 

control and general 

law enforcement. With 

exceptional support 

from several NGA 

key components, 

we were able to 

help the dispersed 

guardsmen by introducing them to 

NGA’s Mobile Analytic GEOINT 

Environment, known as MAGE. 

MAGE is a mobile app that manages 

Dear colleagues,

Protecting the pope is not part 

of our usual mission. But unique 

security challenges often lead to 

innovation, and partnering to 

protect the public during major 

events is one of the services NGA 

provides other government entities 

when requested to do so. 

I was proud to be involved in 

such a partnering when Pope 

Francis visited our nation’s 

capital last September. While 

volunteering as a member of the 

U.S. Army National Guard, I was 

able to also represent NGA and 

contribute unique NGA services 

to support the effort.

For leaders of the Papal Visit 

Task Force in Washington, D.C., the 

challenge was how to coordinate 

the activities and reporting of D.C. 

National Guardsmen during the 

visit. The D.C. National Guard is 

trained for domestic operations, 

and they were tasked with helping 

manage the influx of thousands 

of spectators during the pope’s 

visit. After speaking with task force 

leaders, representatives of NGA’s 

a common operating picture and 

provides situational awareness on 

mobile devices. The guardsmen 

used MAGE to make graphic 

reports. The Task Force’s Joint 

Operations Center used the tool 

to track guardsmen 

and events across 

Washington, D.C.

A fellow guardsman, 

Spc. Gardner, who 

supported the JOC, 

perhaps summed it 

best when he said, 

“It gives you exact 

locations [near] real 

time, with the ability 

to include imagery, so 

that’s really cool.”

It was cool! It was 

also a great example 

of the kind of premier 

geospatial intelligence 

service NGA is known 

for. The guardsmen 

performed exceptionally well during 

Operation Roman Watch, and it 

was an honor to coordinate our 

engagement with this mission partner.

1st Lt. Daniel “Dan” Banasik

U.S. Army National Guard 

Customer Account Manager, NGA
f

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20 NG

Scenar

A team of first responders and analysts have an urgent 

need for a new application that will allow them to 

geographically tag and share information on mobile 

devices. A severe tornado in the Midwest is imminent, 

less than a week away, and such an app would streamline 

the team’s emergency efforts with pinpoint accuracy and 

help team members respond more rapidly. 

The team has relied on National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency for similar apps in past emergencies. In this 

case, though, they need something with a greater set of 

features, and they need it coded and tested to run with 

near-nonexistent downtime. And they need it delivered 

within a matter of days, not weeks or months. 

This particular scenario is fictional, but it is not far-fetched. 

It provides a very real glimpse into how NGA’s IT 

developers are creating and delivering new capabilities 

and applications that help NGA’s customers meet 

their geospatial intelligence needs – on their terms and 

timetable, not the agency’s. 

In the case presented in the scenario, NGA has 

an existing app that could be customized to fit firstresponders' unique requirements within a day or 

two. The app – called MAGE, an acronym for Mobile 

Analytic GEOINT Environment – and NGA’s capability 

to quickly develop, test and deploy a reliable product 

to its customers exist in NGA’s open-source cloud 

environment. (See story, page 18, for another example 

of customized MAGE use.)

Since becoming director of NGA, Robert Cardillo 

has expressed his vision for moving the agency’s 

architecture to a more open environment and working 

with industry to deliver innovative technology to 

help NGA satisfy its customers’ need for speed. This 

vision is further supported by NGA Deputy Director 

Sue Gordon’s call to fully move NGA — its data, 

applications and operations — into the cloud within 

two years to create faster and better services and 

solutions for its GEOINT customers.

Internal c

So what does NGA's move to the cloud mean for IT, 

and what does the agency do when it fully gets there? 

It lets go. 

It lets go of a monolithic IT infrastructure that demands 

extravagant sums of money to host the very solutions it is 

tasked to deploy. It lets go of the idea that software code 

must conform to function and that configuration is kept 

close to the chest. 

"It's the collaboration and communication of software 

developers, analysts, data experts and IT professionals, 

By Evan Frank, Ctr., Chief Information Officer – IT Services

solutions

at the speed of ne
| feature

|

Phfinder 2016 2

while automating the process of software delivery and 

infrastructure changes," said John "Murph" Murphy, 

a research and development technologist in NGA's 

Information Integration Office. "Get everyone together... 

simplify your software and services so they're not so 

monolithic." 

It also means NGA embracing its role as a 

service-driven entity sourced from a wheelhouse of 

collaborative innovation. It does more with less — 

more speed, more integrity and more solutions with 

less latency, less resources and less money. 

"The biggest change that users will see is how quickly 

new mission capabilities will be delivered," said Adam 

Timm, the unclassified domain mission manager for 

GEOINT Services. 

Describing what he referred to as a code-a-thon, which 

occurred in January, Timm said that NGA software 

developers and testers were able to work entirely in a 

cloud environment —in this case a small group with 

laptops and Internet access — and code, test and deploy 

successful GEOINT software in a matter of hours. 

"That's the speed at which we can deliver mission 

capability," said Timm. "This process allows us 

to get an analyst with a developer to talk and, 

through rapid iteration, change the way we do 

requirements development." 

A caveat with the process, Timm noted, is that 

all of the involved parties are either part of or in 

close communication with NGA’s development and 

operations team, commonly referred to as DevOps, 

which essentially means developing in the same space 

in which you operate. 

While this sets the tone and pace for the agency's 

early-adopter programs, NGA's current enterprise IT 

architecture comprises nearly 150 programs scheduled 

for cloud migration, and many of those programs 

contain siloed IT systems built on legacy frameworks. 

Transitioning those legacy systems and legacy-minded 

program managers to a new and hyper-connected 

architecture within two years is a significant challenge.

“The 800-pound gorilla in the room is ‘culture 

change,’” said Murphy, NGA DevOps lead, at a recent 

cloud tech conference, responding to an industry 

representative asking how NGA will transition its 

entire enterprise to the cloud by the end of 2017. 

“The big change will be when we can get program 

managers into a room and say, ‘see this.’”

Murphy spoke of small-group sessions and 

program outreach as vessels for cultural change, but 

he also offered something that any developer, from 

an NGA engineer to a young upstart in a basement 

office, can now see. 
f

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22 NG

NGA's unclassified website (https://devops.

geointservices.io) is a beta-stage portal for program 

managers, developers and users alike to engage 

Murphy’s DevOps team and learn the benefits 

of what GEOINT Services Development and 

Engineering Lead Ben Tuttle calls “a cloud-native 

platform.” The site is scheduled to go fully live in 

April, and, if successful, it will be a clear point of 

entry for those looking to take full advantage of 

NGA's cloud-native DevOps environment. 

"If you think of DevOps as a framework, they have 

bounds on them," Tuttle said. "You can’t just do 

whatever you want. There are rules. But, usually, 

people play by the rules if the framework is right. It’s 

flexible, and, if you buy into this framework, you’ll 

do things faster and more effectively.” 

A program can transition solely to a web services 

infrastructure, which removes the constraints of 

onsite hardware, but without adopting a cloud-native 

platform as a service, or PaaS, the elegance and speed 

of a program’s DevOps is greatly restricted.

External partne

GEOINT Services and DevOps leaders such as 

Murphy, Timm and Tuttle have taken Cardillo’s 

challenge to heart and partnered with industry 

innovators including Pivotal Software, whose Cloud 

Foundry is an example of a cloud-native PaaS.

Chris Goehring, Cloud Foundry’s senior 

platform architect, said that Cloud Foundry 

streamlines the experience for developers and 

operators by creating, deploying, running and 

managing software in the cloud through a set of 

contracts; digital promises between the platform 

and the software centered around automation; 

operating systems; middleware and services. The 

company also takes into account monitoring, 

availability, scaling, routing, zero-downtime 

patching and deployments. 

It all equates to consistency and portability of 

applications across IT environments and cloud 

providers so that application developers and service 

providers can focus on application itself. Or, as Pivotal’s 

haiku for Cloud Foundry states, “Here is my source 

code. Run it for me in the cloud. I do not care how.”

Developers are able to more intently focus on 

addressing user and mission needs through building 

great software without getting tangled up in all the 

underlying mechanics of the cloud. 

"DevOps, platforms, continuous delivery and 

microservices are patterns that emerge in highperforming [cloud native] organizations that 

deliver highly available applications continuously 

at scale,” said Sharon Ober, Pivotal’s NGA 

account manager. “NGA is embarking on a 

cloud-native journey to drive successful mission 

outcomes by transforming the way it builds 

software in order to create new and compelling 

experiences for its customers and workforce.” 

The administrative capabilities are also not to be 

underestimated. Security, for example, has often 

served as a necessary delay to the deployment of 

GEOINT solutions. 

What good is a quickly deployed, flexible, 

resilient — but unsecure — app? Even at the 

unclassified level users need to have confidence in 

the data consumed through the apps they provision. 

NGA’s Jason Hess has accompanied GEOINT 

Services and the DevOps team at every step, 

including their collaboration with Pivotal, making IT 

accreditation cloud native as well.

“This is what will allow the risk management 

framework to work at the speed of the user,” said 

Hess. “The whole [assessment and authorization] 

process should be condensed. Do you want to get it 

done in hours and days, or weeks and months?” 

Hess said that the process is condensed due to 

automation of common services, such as access 

control and malware protection, from immediate 

implementation into a program’s cloud-native 

infrastructure, to automated testing of the app’s code. 

These cloud-native processes greatly reduce 

the time, resources and manual configuration 

management required to develop GEOINT 

solutions in traditional network architectures and 

remove many of the growing pains associated 

with deploying software into an enterprise the 

size of NGA. 

The end result: the user gets better, faster and 

more secure solutions.

To level set, the DevOps team’s full-force 

transition to an entirely cloud-native environment is 

not one that is easy or even immediately necessary 

for every NGA program. 

NGA Deputy Chief Information Officer Shishu 

Gupta recently spoke at the aforementioned cloud 

tech conference, stating that NGA systems not 

directly delivering GEOINT software solutions can 

go through a traditional lift-and-shift to the web 

services cloud infrastructure and be refactored for 

Cloud Foundry, or some other cloud-native PaaS, at 

an agreed-upon future time. 

But DevOps and the cloud-native environment 

in which it works are the future, and they are 

essential to strengthening NGA’s support to the 

GEOINT community. 

24 NG

Lean Six Sigma is a data-driven 

approach to business process 

improvement. While rooted in 

manufacturing, LSS has evolved into a 

leading way for businesses of all kinds 

to improve operational efficiencies. Its 

use is helping the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency significantly 

reduce compliance reporting 

time, establish standardized and 

repeatable processes, and increase 

accountability, among other 

benefits. For us as individuals, it 

helps us work smarter and faster.

As its name suggests LSS draws 

on the philosophies, principles 

and practices of both Lean and 

Six Sigma approaches. It builds 

on the knowledge, methods and 

tools derived from decades of 

operational improvement research 

and implementation, which began 

immediately following World War II. 

Efficiencies were needed to quickly 

rebuild Japan and other war-torn 

parts of the world, ultimately to 

ensure they could contribute to the 

global economy. Lean strategies 

reduce time and cost through 

process optimization, by focusing 

on eliminating bottlenecks, waste, 

and non-value added activity. Six 

Sigma focuses on meeting customer 

requirements and stakeholder 

expectations, and on improving quality 

by measuring and eliminating defects.

The fundamental goal of LSS in 

the business realm is to build better 

understanding of customer needs 

and cultivate a collective workforce 

mindset of innovation and continuous 

process improvement. Five NGA 

key components – Source, Research 

(formerly known as InnoVision), and 

the offices of diversity management 

and equal employment, the inspector 

general and the chief information 

officer – demonstrate how the 

agency is applying LSS principles to 

improve its business processes. The 

improvements these organizations 

have realized by incorporating an 

LSS approach range from significant 

reductions in process cycle time, 

increased transparency, accountability, 

reduced process cost and improved 

customer satisfaction. Specifically, 

staffers in the diversity office reduced 

their cumulative compliance reporting 

processing time by over 150 days, 

established standardized repeatable 

operational procedures/process 

maps and eliminated two timely 

superfluous reporting activities. 

Those in the inspector general’s 

office reduced the Inspections Draft 

reporting time by over 70 days, 

revised business process guidance 

and established an on-the-job training 

capability to accelerate functional 

professional development. 

Training 

The NGA Business Improvement 

Office leverages LSS methodology 

to help improve the efficiency and 

effectiveness of business processes 

across the agency. A core office 

mission is to empower the NGA 

workforce to identify, lead and 

complete improvement initiatives 

that drive enterprise-wide mission 

excellence. This is achieved through a 

continuous-learning framework that 

includes Green Belt, Champion and 

Executive Champion training events. 

The green belt is typically a junior 

to mid-level subject matter expert 

and the most crucial member of 

an LSS project team. Traditionally 

serving as project leads, green belts 

are responsible for managing the 

kick-off and completion of LSS 

initiatives with the approval of their 

direct supervisors and senior leaders. 

The Green Belt training teaches 

these prospective practitioners the 

foundational principals of the LSS 

project management frameworks. 

The training approach is designed to 

accommodate a variety of workforce 

learning styles informed by a blended 

learning model; 26 hours of Webbased training, followed by a two-day 

interactive instructor-led session. Over 

all, the training empowers candidates 

to lead change with knowledge of 

useful tools, techniques and resources 

to aid in the successful identification 

and implementation of process 

improvement efforts that substantially 

improve the agency’s performance 

and consequence to the customer. 

After successfully completing 

the Green Belt Course, a black belt 

coach is assigned to the candidate to 

provide additional training, advisory 

support and mentoring to help 

the green belt lead and complete a 

process improvement project.

Champions play a very important 

role in all successful LSS initiatives. 

The champion’s role is typically 

filled by a senior manager. These 

individuals have the primary 

mission of ensuring team success by 

providing adequate resources and 

removing any roadblocks preventing 

execution of the improvement 

project. They also play a pivotal role 

in defining the project scope and 

completion schedule. 

Champion and Executive 

Champion training programs 

support NGA seniors who 

recognize the need to promote 

greater efficiency and effectiveness 

within their organizations. 

Interactive, thought provoking and 

dynamic, the Champion training 

is a two-day, in-class session, and 

the Executive Champion training 

is a half-day, in-class session, both 

facilitated by an expert master 

black belt. The courses offer 

NGA leaders opportunities to 

share learned experiences and to 

conduct interactive exercises to 

put LSS principals into practice. 

More importantly, NGA seniors 

who complete either training 

will walk away with an in-depth 

understanding of how to best 

leverage LSS to bring greater 

success to their organizations and 

their workforce. 

Stephen Jayjock devotes every day at NGA to 

improving the way the agency conducts business.

Lean Six Sigma Brings Measurabl

By Stephen Jayjock, Business Improvement Office
| INSIGHT |

Pathfinder 2016

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency is taking action to reach 

Director Robert Cardillo’s goal of 

creating a culture that starts and 

finishes with NGA’s customers. 

The shift toward customer 

centricity naturally involves 

the information technology and 

software development necessary to 

provide customer access to NGA’s 

offerings, but it also requires 

developing a workforce that keeps 

the customer at its core. 

Following release of NGA 

Strategy 2015, the agency 

quickly initiated two activities 

to support the goal. “Lead with 

your Customer” and an agency 

agility training program are two 

professional development efforts 

aimed at helping NGA foster a 

culture of customer centricity.

NGA is evolving its people and 

IT – two seemingly different career 

skill sets – through similar customercentric approaches. Both the LWYC 

and agile professional development 

programs are educating the NGA 

workforce to conduct business by 

looking through the lens of the 

customer. Both programs teach 

similar methodologies: daily tagups or “scrums,” stand-ups, action 

plans and retrospective techniques. 

Both programs promote employee 

collaboration, fluid dynamic 

approaches to task management 

and problem solving, organizational 

development and change, risk 

taking and employee engagement. 

“These programs promote the 

customer-centric shift we need 

at NGA,” said Ralph Plaskett, a 

member of the Agency Agility 

Strategic Initiative Team, which 

manages the agility training program. 

“The agency is using agile principles 

to create an agile mindset.”

The LWYC training emphasizes 

the importance of creating 

positive, lasting relationships 

with customers. Consultants Mark 

David Jones and J. Jeff Kober, who 

lead the training, contend this is 

absolutely essential for creating 

a customer-centric organization. 

Jones and Kober provide each 

training participant with a toolkit 

for obtaining customer metrics and 

feedback, which can assist them 

with better understanding their 

customers and providing tailored 

support and experiences. 

“The LWYC training introduces 

the best practices of private-sector 

corporations and public-sector 

agencies to benefit every part of 

NGA’s wide-ranging operation,” 

said Jones. 

Echoing Gandhi’s sentiment, 

Jones also stressed it is not 

enough to think about and plan 

to serve customers.

“The emphasis of both agile and 

Lead with your Customer is on 

taking action,” he said.

On the technology side of 

the house, NGA has begun to 

implement Scrum Alliance®

techniques along with agile IT 

development and acquisition 

methodologies. Scrum is an agile 

framework for tackling complex 

projects or workflows. It involves 

direct engagement (i.e., active 

dialogue) with customers to 

determine their IT application 

needs. Development and 

acquisition teams then organize 

around common work objectives.

This modern development 

process has been shown to better 

meets customers’ needs. Traditional 

government procurement and IT 

development processes are time 

consuming and costly, and often 

do not fully incorporate users’ 

and security requirements into the 

development cycle.

“The whole premise of agency 

agility is that the customer is part of 

the entire acquisition process,” said 

Karyn Hayes-Ryan, NGA’s Agile 

Champion. “It’s all about mission 

first; that requirements cannot and 

will not remain constant, but they 

evolve as the users’ missions, needs 

and requirements evolve.”

Nurturing a customer-centric 

mindset in both NGA’s people 

and approach to IT acquisition 

and development will enable 

mission success, positive impact 

for customers and continuous 

learning, according to Plaskett. 

LWYC and agency agility training 

provide learning opportunities 

to reach that goal. Through them, 

and other customer-focused 

professional development, NGA 

will continually evolve its workforce 

and operations to “make things 

happen” for its customers.

Angela French, Ctr., Xperience Communications also 

contributed to this article.

It’s about making th

By Norman Stein, Ctr., Xperience Communications

“You may never know what results come from your action. 

 But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” 

– Mahatma Gandhi
f

eatu

26 NG

By Amelia Cohen-Levy, Ctr., Human Development Directorate
| feature |

Pathfinder 2016

When it comes to supporting 

its mission partners, National 

Geospatial-Intelligence Agency 

personnel literally travel to the far 

corners of the Earth. 

NGA’s customers are decisionmakers on the forefront of some 

of the world’s most immediate 

and complex problems, whether 

involving national security 

concerns, humanitarian crises or 

environmental challenges. When 

they need geospatial intelligence, 

they need it where their mission 

is. That’s usually nowhere close to 

NGA headquarters. 

NGA meets its partners 

wherever they are – geographically, 

technologically and culturally 

– and works to empower them, 

often through training. That means 

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

College instructors leave their 

high-tech classrooms in NGA 

facilities, grab their passports and 

board a plane, bringing with them 

necessary materials and support 

so that all students can work from 

the same data.

It is after the plane lands that 

local challenges often become 

apparent. That’s why it is so 

beneficial to conduct partner 

trainings in-country. On the 

customer’s terrain Team NGA is 

better able to identify potential 

challenges firsthand and help 

structure solutions for working 

around problem issues. 

Growing GEOINT o

International partnerships, 

including nontraditional alliances, 

expand Team NGA’s mission 

consequence, helping the agency 

move beyond the Department 

of Defense to a wide range of 

customers. NGA shares its decades 

of institutionalized knowledge and 

cutting-edge tradecraft training. 

NGA’s partners, in turn, share data 

produced by analysts the agency 

knows and trusts. Partner products 

often cover areas NGA may not 

have ever fully mapped, including 

terrain and shoreline details, 

sparing the agency analytical and 

financial resources, as well as 

providing regional expertise from 

the people who best know their 

own backyards.

NGA’s collaboration with foreign 

partners is done primarily through 

its International Affairs directorate. 

IA negotiates Basic Exchange 

and Cooperation Agreements, 

otherwise known as BECAs, or 

memorandums of understanding 

that expand partner nation access 

to global sources of data. These 

partnerships create a worldwide 

GEOINT enterprise that helps both 

NGA and its mission partners to 

stay relevant in the face of rapidly 

evolving situations and capabilities.

Each partner nation has its own 

goals for growing GEOINT and its 

own challenges for making it happen. 

Taking NGA expertise to these 

partners’ locations helps with both.

Technical challenes in

“The U.S. government’s goal is to 

strengthen the government of the 

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 

such that it can never again be 

a safe haven for international 

terrorism,” said Robert Norris, 

Ph. D., former director of NGA 

Task Force Afghanistan. “Part of 

that strengthening is to provide the 

necessary intelligence support.”

Sometimes, that is easier said 

than done. In Afghanistan, as 

in many far-flung locales, low 

Internet bandwidth and unreliable 
f

eatu

28 NG

materials that NGA had translated 

into Dari, the program was expedited 

from two weeks to two days.

Training the Afghans expanded 

NGA’s capabilities as well. NGA’s 

success there now serves as a 

model that can be applied in other 

parts of the world.

Language barrers in

Sometimes NGA instructors 

discover unfamiliar local 

customs, logistics issues, or in 

the case of Colombia, simple 

language barriers. In Colombia, 

Team NGA was pleased to learn 

that analysts have access to the 

same commercial off-the-shelf 

software available in the United 

States, but ensuring accurate 

interpretation was the challenge.

Language barriers may be 

the easiest problem to solve, 

however; between NGA’s cadre 

of multilingual employees and 

NGC’s Foreign Language and 

Culture Office, translation support 

is another in-house capability that 

NGA brings to the table. 

Liz Vazquez, who has deployed 

to Colombia with the trainers, 

facilitates her students’ knowledge 

assimilation and helps instructors 

reach their learning objectives by 

ensuring accurate interpretation. 

“If I wasn’t there, we’d risk losing 

something in translation,” Vazquez 

said. “Then, all our efforts are wasted.”

Dana Fairley-Juarez, an NGC 

instructor, has conducted training 

all over the world. Her goal is to 

build an in-country cadre of skilled 

users, analysts and instructors by 

facilitating classes and peer-to-peer 

conversations. Much of her work 

involves building confidence as well 

as capability, context and correlation. 

“I really like when people 

immediately realize how they can 

use what you’ve taught them,” 

said Fairley-Juarez. 

Cultural elemets i

GEOINT trainers and interpreters 

aren’t the only ones involved in 

programs with foreign partners. 

Other experts become involved 

when circumstances warrant. 

As Ethiopian analysts completed 

initial NGA GEOINT training in fall 

2015, human geography emerged 

as an important and relevant topic. 

In tailoring customer service to 

meet this need, NGA provided both 

training and tradecraft standards 

and data that could be applied to 

the Ethiopians’ work. 

Team NGA went beyond simply 

sharing concepts. Dean Bland, an 

NGA human geography outreach 

coordinator, followed up the training 

with a visit to Ethiopia, where 

he initiated a joint project. The 

project combined data with human 

geography information to create 

actionable, region-focused products 

that address relevant thematic 

elements. In this case, the project 

team chose to analyze the cultural, 

tribal and geographical influences 

that impacted their area of interest. 

An approach such as this 

develops trust between NGA 

and its foreign partners and 

fosters collaboration toward other 

mutually beneficial goals. Most 

importantly, training and solutions 

are never prescriptive.

“We don’t want our foreign partners 

bound by how we do things,” Bland 

said. “They understand the context 

of their region better than any of our 

analysts could. The only difference is 

that we have a few years’ head start.” 

connectivity in the region limit 

data accessibility. In addition, to 

ensure success, solutions provided 

must be low- or no-cost and 

require minimal training.

Captain Ryan Nelson, U.S. Army, 

is an NGA crisis and expeditionary 

manager. He says the GEOINT 

users he has trained in Afghanistan 

face more extreme obstacles than 

those in other developing countries. 

“We’ve been in Afghanistan for 15 

years now,” Nelson said. “But none 

of it will matter if we don’t enable the 

Afghans to do the work themselves.”

NGA’s Expeditionary Team 

capitalized on experience from 

partners in similar environments 

to craft a solution with the 

Afghans. Trainers introduced 

the Protected Internet Exchange, 

commonly known as PiX, during 

a November 2015 training session. 

PiX provides low-bandwidth 

data-sharing capabilities and 

allows Afghan forces to access data 

themselves rather than requiring 

formal requests for information 

be submitted. This is a key stride 

toward NGA’s vision of providing 

‘self-service’ customer options.

“PiX represents an enormous 

capability for the Afghan Security 

Pillar,” said Army Maj. General 

Mark Quantock, deputy chief of 

staff for intelligence, Resolute 

Support headquarters, and former 

NGA director of operations. “We 

are seeing them use the capability 

to good effect.”

Some of the first Afghan students 

have been able to build imagery, 

leading to multiple arrests. With the 

support of NGA experts, an Afghan 

officer from that initial training led 

the next session, which took place 

in January 2016. By using training 
| feature |

Pathfinder 2016

An approach such as

this develops trust 

between NGA and its

foreign partners and 

fosters collaboration 

toward other mutually 

beneficial goals. Most

importantly, training 

and solutions are 

never prescriptive.

‘

’
telling our st

30 NG

Tell us your personal, unclassified version of the work you or your office does for 

NGA for possible inclusion in the next Pathfinder. Send your 600 word or less 

account to Pathfinder@nga.mil. Submissions may be edited for clarity and length.

What’s your story?

NGA Precision Guides Histor

SpaceX Laun

By Daniel Colling and Dave Abele, Source Geomatics Office

surveys and staff support, including 

recommending geodetic policy, 

reviewing plans and requirements, 

assisting offices in requesting geodetic 

support, and assigning priorities to 

geodetic surveys for the 45th Space 

Wing, Patrick AFB. The branch also 

serves a host of other DOD agencies, 

ranges and contractors within the 

southeastern United States and 

down-range islands. It is one of six 

branches in the Surveys Division, 

Office of Geomatics, within NGA’s 

Source directorate. 

Months of prepa

In late December 2014 the 45th 

Space Wing announced SpaceX 

would lease CX13 with the goal of 

establishing a landing pad for launch 

hardware. NGA’s Geodetic Survey 

Branch began working with 45th 

Space Wing and SpaceX personnel 

to re-establish geodetic control at 

the site, bringing it into the existing 

launch range control network. 

As the team worked, 23 previous 

geodetic control stations were 

On December 21, 2015, the world 

watched as SpaceX, a commercial 

space company, completed a vertical 

landing after the launch of its 

Falcon 9 rocket from Complex 13 at 

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station 

in Florida. It was a first for SpaceX 

and a milestone in the space launch 

industry, as used rocket stages 

typically are destroyed upon reentry. 

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency involvement was critical to 

the success of the historic SpaceX 

event. NGA’s Eastern Range 

Geodetic Survey Branch at Patrick 

Air Force Base established geodetic 

control on the launch pad, which 

provided a dependable threedimensional location for the landing 

and recovery of the first stage. 

According to SpaceX the ability 

to reuse the first stage of the rocket 

will greatly reduce the cost of future 

launches for customers such as 

the Department of Defense and 

NASA. The company reports that 

Falcon 9 costs roughly $60 million 

to build, with the rocket engines 

accounting for the bulk of this cost. 

The first stage of the rocket is used 

to propel the payload into space and 

is normally destroyed upon reentry. 

Even if built and launched by a 

commercial company, cheaper space 

capabilities benefit the government 

agencies that contract them.

History of sup

NGA and its predecessors have 

been providing geodic support 

to the eastern launch range for 

nearly 50 years, including when 

the government last used CX13 as a 

Minute Man missile test site in 1978. 

The Eastern Range Geodetic Survey 

Branch provides precise geodetic 

identified as being near or on 

CX13, but only four were found to 

be viable. Geodetic control using 

WGS 84 positioning (i.e., a set of 

constants and model parameters 

that describe the Earth’s size, shape 

and gravity and geomagnetic fields) 

was essential for the rocket to have 

the correct coordinates to land after 

launch. SpaceX requested data 

accuracy at 1 meter or better, and if 

possible, they wanted it down to the 

centimeter level of accuracy. 

The government-industry team 

worked over the next several months 

to protect the four viable control 

points and update the passive marks 

with new geodetic positions and 

local elevation data. In August 2015 

NGA provided WGS 84 geodetic 

positions (latitude, longitude and 

ellipsoid height) of the landing pad’s 

center mark and four corner azimuth 

marks. Team members computed 

geodetic azimuths from the pad center 

to each corner mark and databaseinterpolated local datum values. 

Our unmatched level of accuracy 

gave SpaceX added room to work 

with when computing other launch 

variables, such as ground-level winds. 

The ability to replicate launches 

like this presents an enormous costsavings benefit and thus opens the 

door for cheaper and more efficient 

space exploration. For that to be 

possible, accurate and timely geodetic 

support is required. NGA's Eastern 

Range Geodetic Survey Branch 

was integral to the success of this 

monumental moment.

Daniel Colling and Dave Abele are NGA geodetic 

surveyors supporting Patrick Air Force Base, Florida.
telling our st

| telling our story |

Pathfinder 2016

working groups and in Armed Forces 

Communication and Electronics 

Assn. and Intelligence and National 

Security Alliance industry days, where 

government and industry members 

converge to collaborate. Since last June, 

we’ve worked closely with the USGIF 

Young Professionals Network and the 

NGA Professionals Network. Of note, 

the NPN created the NED Talks series, 

modeled after TED Talks presentations, 

a great example of how NGA is 

empowering its workforce to engage 

on topics the workforce cares about 

or has an interest in. An employeemanaged talk series is a powerful 

platform, as it reflects workforce 

interests and can help leadership 

understand how well key messages 

are being received and understood.

As we close our year of shadowing 

and helping to carry forward 

our senior leaders’ vision for 

transformation, we think back 

to points made in Shadowing for 

Leadership Development and to the 

lessons we have learned through our 

experience. We believe that keeping 

these thoughts in mind can help all of 

us become better leaders of change:

•	 Have patience. Transformation

takes time, and we must have 

the collective will and patience 

to realize the vision.

•	 Don’t be afraid to put your

hand up and ask questions, or 

ask for help. 

•	 Engage with everyone you

encounter; you never know 

what you will learn from them.

•	 Identify a project you want to

take on and then own it.

•	 Change can be chaotic – lean in!

We can only hope that future 

shadowing teams will enjoy and 

benefit from the experience as 

much as we have. 

It’s no secret that Director Robert 

Cardillo and Deputy Director 

Sue Gordon are committed to 

change. They are leading a charge 

to transform National GeospatialIntelligence Agency into a more 

customer-centric agency.

For the past year we have been 

fortunate to learn what that means 

up close and personal. We have 

shadowed the director and deputy 

director through special events 

and daily operations to learn more 

about their vision and strategy 

for the future. As our year-long 

shadowing winds down, we have 

a better understanding of how they 

approach issues, challenges and 

opportunities. We also have a good 

sense of how the agency is doing 

and where we need to work harder 

moving forward.

Daniel D. Flash, Ph.D., and 

James R. Long, Ph.D., in their 

book Shadowing for Leadership 

Development, define shadowing 

as, “a technique in which a person 

wishing to learn a skill accompanies, 

observes and collaborates with 

another (mentor), while that person 

is employing their expertise on a 

value-producing assignment.”

Our shadowing assignment began 

at the 2015 GEOINT Symposium 

in Washington, D.C. Our task for 

the year has been to observe our 

leaders’ interactions and ultimately 

incorporate our observations into 

planning for NGA’s participation in 

the 2016 symposium. While NGA is 

not an event sponsor, participation in 

the annual GEOINT Symposium is 

important to the agency, as it serves 

as a significant gathering place 

for geospatial intelligence thought 

leaders from around the world. 

(United States Geospatial Intelligence 

Foundation is official sponsor of the 

GEOINT Symposium.)

What we remember from our 

very first week of shadowing is how 

personally invested the D and DD 

are in NGA’s collaboration with 

the larger GEOINT community. We 

witnessed some very long days 

during GEOINT Symposium that we 

knew were intense, but our leaders 

still had an exuberance and an 

energy that was reflected in vendor 

conversations, the keynote speech 

and in various panel discussions. 

One event that we felt was 

particularly successful was the NGA 

acquisition panel discussion. Led by 

the DD, panel members developed a 

scorecard, which both they and industry 

members completed. The NGA 

panelists actually scored themselves 

lower than industry did. Why is this 

worth mentioning? Because NGA 

now has a better sense of what we 

[NGA] are doing right. The exercise 

also helped us identify certain things 

that are impeding our opportunities 

for success with industry. The NGA 

panelists concluded by committing to 

investing in our acquisition processes 

and improving our communication 

with industry. They also committed 

to bringing the scorecard back to 

the 2016 GEOINT Symposium for 

transparency of progress.

With the ice broken through 

GEOINT 2015, we feel more 

comfortable engaging with NGA 

leadership and feel better prepared 

to use those experiences to help NGA 

achieve its strategic and tactical goals. 

NGA is focused on the future, on 

understanding our customers and in 

developing our workforce. 

Like most federal agencies, NGA 

faces industry engagement and 

communication challenges, but 

we are driving progress through 

partnering activities beyond the 

GEOINT Symposium. Examples 

include participation in USGIF 

NGA tran

Making it per

By Sandra J. Simpson, Xperience, and Tamara J. Verdon, Office of Contract Services
collaboration

32 NG

DLA to deliver updated maps to units 

directly from NGA’s digital holdings 

or cyber-hardened databases staged 

forward,” said Kornuta.

NGA completed the transfer 

of the hard-copy print mission 

to DLA in June 2015 to reduce 

costs and print times. The move 

also unwittingly created an 

economic engine based on a new 

unifying commodity of exchange 

now used between production 

offices, agencies and partnering 

countries – a 

print-ready 

georeferenced 

PDF file. 

“Transitioning 

the print mission 

to DLA enables 

each agency to do 

what we uniquely 

do best,” said 

Kornuta, “NGA 

is marvelous 

at geospatial 

intelligence. DLA 

is marvelous 

at logistics.”

NGA now maintains over 

100,000 print-ready map files 

that are seamlessly updated in 

the DLA Catalog. These maps 

are made available through Map 

of the World visualization or 

print-on-demand web services, 

allowing customers to view maps 

electronically, print hard copies 

or order thousands of hard-copy 

maps or data disks through DLA. 

NGA and DLA also use their new 

business model to respond to world 

events. During the Ebola crisis in 

West Africa, maps, charts and atlases 

were printed on an as-needed 

basis and helped deployers and 

humanitarian aid workers mobilize 

within two weeks of the initial 

request for mapping products. 

In years past, printing timelines 

required months to years to build 

up warehouse stocks, making 

the map products essentially 

obsolete from the moment of 

Rapid-deployment units, such 

as the Army's Georgia-based 

Fort Bragg Ready Brigade, need 

thousands of copies of maps 

during their pre-deployment 

preparation, and sometimes 

those maps change during the 

deployment cycle.

Less than a year after the 

National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency and Defense Logistics 

Agency instituted a new 

operational model for producing 

and delivering the most up-todate mapping products possible, 

the interagency framework has 

demonstrated it can deliver as 

many as 25,000 freshly updated 

and printed maps within 24 hours.

“These timelines were 

unthinkable just two years ago 

but are routinely exercised 

every quarter today,” said 

Dale Kornuta, director of the 

NGA Geospatial Intelligence 

Information Services Office. 

The new model employs the 

benefits of technology to also meet 

the warfighters’ need for digital 

media (e.g., CD, DVDs), and 

the agencies are looking toward 

delivering additional media formats, 

such as standardized external hard 

drives, that would enable warfighters 

to retain a holistic view of their 

operating environment. On top of 

that the collaboration is lowering 

costs and reducing the time necessary 

to fulfill mapping requirements for 

customers of all kinds.

The NGA-DLA partnership 

established a business model 

whereby NGA posts map files 

online, and printing is staged at 

DLA locations around the world. 

The print-on-demand process 

ensures combatant commands have 

the ability to obtain updated maps 

and charts when, where and how 

they need them. 

“Print-on-demand is a game changer 

for the warfighter. We have reached 

a tipping point that enables the NSG, 

ASG, our co-production allies and 

issue. The traditional printing 

process also required minimum 

print quantities, resulting in 

warehouses filled with surplus 

paper stockpiles. Obsolete maps 

were sometimes retained in 

inventory for years or decades. 

New updates required 

replacing the existing hardcopy shelf stock with the latest 

revision, which was a costly and 

time-consuming process. 

The agency collaboration has 

changed all of that.

“We have 

the vehicle in 

place to print 

exactly what the 

customer needs; 

nothing more, 

nothing less,” 

said Kevin Bettis, 

chief of DLA’s 

Aviation Division. 

“We reduced 

the paper stock 

reserve by over 

90 percent, 

disposing of over 

135 million maps.” 

DLA initially stood up its 

print-on-demand capabilities 

in January 2014. Within the first 

year the agency reported that 

print volumes decreased by 50 

percent, an estimated savings of 

$7 million. Over the next 35 years, 

DLA estimates a savings of tens of 

millions of dollars. 

DLA has also reduced delivery 

times and shipping costs by 

printing maps closer to its 

customers. Print-on-demand 

locations are strategically 

sprinkled across the globe – in 

California, Florida, Georgia, 

Hawaii, South Carolina, Virginia, 

Germany and Japan.

“The interagency collaboration has 

reduced the excessive war reserve 

and the associated costs, but the 

number-one benefit is our ability to 

provide the most up-to-date maps to 

the warfighter,” said Bettis. 

Interagency collaboration m

services to customer needs By Josh Laurion, Source Comm

The interagency 

collaboration has 

reduced the excessive 

war reserve and the 

associated costs, but 

the number-one benefit 

is our ability to provide 

the most up-to-date 

maps to the warfighter,

‘

’
collaborati

| Collaboration |

Pathfinder 2016

increased, there is a greater return on investment for both 

parties,” said Tierney.

Based on the success of the MGCP, the United States 

established a multinational coproduction and sharing 

agreement led by NGA and Germany’s Bundeswehr 

GeoInformation Centre. The TanDEM-X High Resolution 

Elevation Data Exchange program, known as TREx, illustrates 

how the value of these kinds of partnerships often exceeds the 

technology available without them. 

“Together with Germany, we've reached out to other nations to 

share post-processing of data in a way that is mutually beneficial 

to all that participate,” said Mark Sorum, NGA’s TREx lead. 

On the international side, TREx is the result of a publicprivate partnership between Germany’s Aerospace Center 

and Airbus Defence and Space, which represents 86 different 

nationalities. The two tech giants joined forces to launch a dualsatellite system to collect digital elevation data with the purpose 

of modeling the entire earth. Elevation data, also called terrain 

data, provides a digital representation of the earth's surface — 

mapping hills, valleys, mountains and other surface attributes.

Through sharing agreements, the TREx member nations are 

provided access to the unclassified raw elevation data collected 

by the TREx constellation for free, in exchange for edited data 

to share among members. By participating in the alliance, NGA 

is able to increase its elevation data holdings and enhance its 

expertise, said Sorum, who has spent the majority of his 34 

years at NGA working within the elevation data discipline.

The benefits of NGA’s international partnerships often run 

much deeper, beyond new capabilities, according to Sorum.

 “It has been fascinating to see how well and how naturally 

people from such diverse cultures pull together,” he said. 

“I've seen friendships form between Turkish and Chilean 

representatives, and Mongolian and Japanese. I think that 

programs like TREx and MGCP do more than provide costeffective production solutions. I believe these efforts truly 

strengthen the bonds between coalition partners.” 

The TREx Alliance is another example of ‘mission sharing,’ 

which has become increasingly important due to budgetary 

constraints, a constant increase in requirements and the pace 

of today’s 24/7 world.

NGA is also currently exploring the feasibility of 

establishing an additional multinational program, this 

one targeting the coproduction of human geography. HG 

is the study of human presence, patterns and activities 

within their physical environment. The HG multinational 

effort promises to deliver useful information, especially in 

areas of the world where NGA’s partners are more familiar 

with local customs than the agency is. Although still in 

its nascent phase, NGA is enthusiastic about the potential 

benefits to all members of the HG partnership.

“Wherever we go, whether it is for a humanitarian assistance 

and disaster relief mission, or Iraq and Afghanistan, we operate 

in a multinational environment,” said Tierney. “This is where 

our partnerships come to bear.” 

NGA cannot do it alone. NGA will not do it alone.

Such candid language is not typical from government 

leaders, but that is exactly what Robert Cardillo has been 

saying since he became director of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency in October 2014. He has taken every 

opportunity to emphasize that NGA must partner to be 

successful in today’s global environment – a market in which 

the proliferation of commercial services means that NGA 

no longer has a monopoly over geospatial information. The 

agency’s strategy articulates embracing the contributions of 

the agency’s strategic partners as one of its four main goals. 

Key members of what Cardillo calls ‘Team GEOINT’ are 

NGA’s international partners, with whom NGA partners 

to share geospatial information and knowledge. The NGA 

Office of International Affairs negotiates the agency’s sharing 

agreements, both unclassified and classified, and works to 

ensure the relationships are beneficial to all parties. Once the 

agreements have been negotiated, IA coordinates with other 

NGA directorates, such as Source, for their execution. 

“Source executes many of the Foundation GEOINT 

agreements through the Office of Geography [known as 

SFG inside NGA], in collaboration with the NSG [National 

System for Geospatial Intelligence] Operations Executive, 

for the coproduction and exchange of topographic data and 

products,” said Marzio Dellagnello, chief of the international 

branch of the Office of Geography. Aeronautical and 

hydrographic exchanges are executed through two other 

Source offices.

 “NGA’s international partnerships provide an enormous 

value to the United States,” said Melissa Planert, former 

deputy director of the Partnerships Division within IA. 

“Agreements between NGA and international partners help 

the president, National Security Council, DNI [Director of 

National Intelligence] and DOD [Department of Defense] build 

relationships abroad to contribute to our own national security.” 

The Multi-National Geospatial Co-production Program is 

an example of an NGA international partnership. Since 2003, 

the MGCP managed by SFG, has grown to include 31 member 

nations. It serves as a marketplace for unclassified vector data. 

Member nations focus on their part of the world and provide 

data to share with other members.

 NGA partners with 73 additional countries through 

unclassified, bilateral Basic Exchange and Cooperative 

Agreements, which focus on the sharing of basic mapping 

data. Although BECAs are considered lower-level sharing 

agreements, they serve an important role in expanding 

international partnerships. (See related story, page 26.)

 “Because of the unclassified nature of a lot of geospatial 

information, sharing agreements often serve as a starting point 

to establishing a new relationship with a foreign government,” 

said Martin Tierney, director of the Partnership division.

 The explosion in commercial imagery has further fueled 

NGA’s ability to partner with foreign governments. 

“Because the geospatial capabilities of other nations have 

Multilateral partn

typify Team GEOINT era By Kelly Graveline, NGA Communicati
understand the world

34 NG
| understand the world |

Pathfinder 2016
Mapping Alaska and the Arctic

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency 

and National Science Foundation are 

collaborating with the University of 

Minnesota’s Polar Geospatial Center 

and the private sector to create the 

first-ever publicly available, highresolution, satellite-based elevation 

map of Alaska by mid-2016, and of 

the entire Arctic by the end of the 

U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic 

Council in mid-2017. These digital 

elevation models, known as DEMs, 

are derived from NGA-sponsored 

DigitalGlobe commercial imagery 

and will support informed land 

management, sustainable development, 

safe recreation and scientific studies, 

as well as domain-specific challenges 

inherent to the aviation, transportation 

and defense industries. In addition, the 

DEM will serve as a benchmark against 

which future landscape changes (due to, 

for instance, erosion, extreme events or 

climate change) can be measured. 

Department of Interior/U.S. Geological 

Survey, in partnership with the State of 

Alaska, is leading efforts to fly the Alaskan 

Arctic with new sensors, generating 

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar 

data that will complement the Alaska and 

Arctic DEMs. This will improve maps 

and elevation models of these regions to 

unprecedented levels of accuracy. 

NGA has developed and is making 

available in both hard-copy and explorable 

digital formats the most comprehensive 

pan-Arctic map ever published by the U.S. 

government. The map will include layers 

such as Arctic Routes, Arctic Currents, 

Oil Production Sites, Gas Production 

Sites, Oil Drilling Areas, Oil and Gas 

Reserves, Airfields and Ports, Bathymetric 

Data, Digital Terrain Elevation Data and 

Natural Earth (including rivers, railroads 

and populated places). The map will be 

easily accessible on NGA’s Arctic website, 

along with links to Alaska DEMs, NGA’s 

28 nautical charts for the Arctic region, a 

collection of Arctic sailing directions and 

links to other Arctic websites and resources. 

To learn more visit NGA's 

Arctic website at 

http://nga.maps.arcgis.com

Arctic Ocean Ice Br

Sensor: WV

Center La/Long:  82.105 

Image Date: 3 SEP

Copyright 2016, DigitalGlo