May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 3

Table of Contents

Foreword & Introduction 4

Letter from the Director 5

Letter from the Chief Technology Officer 6

Executive Summary 7

Technology Vision 8

Our Principles 10

NGA Today & Tomorrow 11

Findings 12

The Story of Today & The Vision of Tomorrow 15

The Way Ahead 17

Empower Builders and Makers 18

Transform Digital Workspaces 22

Build With Customers 26

Treat Data as a Strategic Asset 30

Bring AI, Cloud & HPC Into GEOINT Mainstream 34

Appendixes 39

Appendix A—Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon 40

Appendix B—About This Report 46

Appendix C—List of Acronyms 47
4 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

FOREWORD & INTRODUCTION
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 5

Foreword & Introduction

Letter from the Director

Treat Software and Data as Strategic Assets

NGA Strategy

People Partnerships Mission Today Mission Tomorrow

2025

Technology

Strategy

Enable

Builders

& Makers

Build With

Customers

Transform

Digital

Workspaces

Bring AI,

Cloud &

HPC Into

GEOINT

Mainstream

As I stated up front in my Director’s Intent, we’re engaged in a pivotal 

competition of grave consequence; a competition we must, and will 

win. We are taking all necessary actions to sustain GEOINT supremacy. 

Maintaining our advantage as the world leader in geospatial intelligence 

requires a sound digital enterprise. We operate a technologically 

complex system-of-systems in our quest to "show the way"— to 

literally get our customers from point A to point B, to help illuminate 

options and inform decisions, and to facilitate actions being taken 

with speed, accuracy and precision. Dependency on technology is 

not our goal—we must leverage and master it. NGA, our mission partners, and, most 

importantly, our industry partners must never cease the innovative development of 

geospatial technologies to maintain comparative advantage over our adversaries. We’re 

in a race, and can’t afford to stand still. NGA's first Technology Strategy will help guide us 

to improving the state of our current technology to arm our people and partners to meet 

today's mission, while charting the course toward meeting future mission. As always, we 

will adapt and adjust wherever and whenever needed.

Robert D. Sharp

VADM, USN

Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
6 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Foreword & Introduction

Letter from the Chief Technology Officer 

That passion is also embedded in the builders and makers of geospatial technology—

whether analysts, scientists, software developers, data professionals, designers, or product 

managers—who all have a driving passion to make better tools and services that enable 

speed and accuracy, delivering the best intelligence to our nation and our allies.

NGA is a software and data enterprise. Our fundamental capabilities are supported by 

software manipulating data. We must invest in key areas to increase our expertise and 

ability to build software faster, increase database pipelines, be more reliable and flexible, 

and most importantly, be better than our adversaries. If our adversaries build better 

software faster, we lose.

Software and data are strategic assets. NGA will adopt modern software engineering 

practices now to advance technology for the future mission. We must practice unrivaled 

DevSecOps and apply modern development practices to all our software. We must move our 

software from a legacy environment to a modern cloud and high-performance computing 

environment and provide guidance to our industry partners to build modern, service-centric 

applications on common platforms. We must adopt a product management approach to 

build customer-centric products employing leading-edge technology to become a modern 

software enterprise.

We must empower the builders and makers of geospatial technology. This strategy focuses 

on enabling those who build and make technology to support NGA and the Systems for 

Geospatial Intelligence. We firmly believe that the most important technology problem is not 

the adoption of artificial intelligence, or quantum computing, but fostering a technology 

workforce steeped in GEOINT and enabling them with an environment to deliver the best 

applications and services in the world. By working with our industry partners, allies, and the 

geospatial technology ecosystem, we will accomplish this and lift the Nation’s capability to 

provide the best GEOINT on the planet. The only way we can show the way is to know the 

way. This is the way.

Mark Munsell

Chief Technology Officer (CTO), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

What does it take to meet future mission with future technology? It 

requires technologists who understand the mission and how GEOINT is 

evolving to meet the mission. Driving future mission requires that 

technologists are leading the GEOINT mission. NGA is the world’s leader 

in geospatial intelligence because of the passion held by our people to 

deliver timely and relevant information to members of the national 

security apparatus, policy makers, and international partners. 
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 7

NGA, along with the broader defense and intelligence apparatus, is in an era where technology is 

deeply intertwined with mission objectives. Be it warfighter support, safety of navigation, or 

support to policy makers, NGA is leveraging technology at an accelerating pace to address present 

and future challenges. Improving the planning and execution of technology projects is a key 

enabler for all four goals defined in NGA Strategy 2025. 

The Way Ahead

To deliver on this strategy, NGA will pursue five key initiatives focused on addressing the 

needs of mission today and grounded in industry-leading practices. These key initiatives 

will empower people, improve processes, and leverage industry-leading technology.

Flexible, responsive, usercentered technology—delivered

at the speed of mission—to truly 

“show the way” for those who 

depend on us.

Executive Summary

Our Vision

NGA’s technology future will propel the continued 

dominance of GEOINT, protecting US interests and 

delivering strategic advantage. In doing so, NGA 

will deliver a technology environment that 

empowers the workforce and mission customers 

in order to meet the needs of certain challenges 

and an uncertain future battlespace.

Our Principles

Technology has been—and will continue to be—

increasingly fundamental for NGA to achieve its 

strategic goals. We must look beyond reacting to 

circumstances and events and toward a model 

that anticipates and proactively provides 

technology to serve the heart of NGA’s mission. To 

achieve this mission, NGA’s enterprise will adopt 

principles to guide how we will enact the vision.

The Story of Today

Deepen Understanding of Mission Customers

Deliver With Velocity; Adapt to Reality

Enable Technology Through Partnership

Meet Future Mission With Future Technology 

Empower Workforce With Tech & Training

Enable

Builders

& Makers

Build With

Customers

Treat Data as 

a Strategic 

Asset

Transform

Digital

Workspaces

Bring AI,

Cloud &

HPC Into

GEOINT

Mainstream
8 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

TECHNOLOGY VISION
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 9

Technology Vision

O u r V i s i o n 

o f t h e F u t u r e

Flexible, responsive, usercentered technology—delivered at 

the speed of mission—to truly 

“show the way” for those who 

depend on us.

NGA’s technology future will propel the continued dominance of 

GEOINT, protecting US interests and delivering strategic advantage. 

In doing so, NGA will deliver a technology environment that 

empowers the workforce and mission customers in order to meet 

the needs of certain challenges and an uncertain future 

battlespace. 
10 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Technology has been—and will continue to be—increasingly fundamental for NGA to achieve 

its strategic goals. We must look beyond reacting to circumstances and events and into a 

model that anticipates and proactively provides technology to serve the heart of NGA’s 

mission. To achieve this vision, NGA’s enterprise will adopt the following principles to guide 

how we will deliver on our objective to provide the technology and products our workforce, 

analysts, decision makers, and warfighters demand and deserve.

Technology Vision

Meet Future Mission With 

Future Technology 

NGA will anticipate future 

mission demand to deliver 

proactive technology solutions. 

Not being beholden to “how 

we’ve always done it,” NGA will 

ensure we support future 

technology needs while 

delivering on our mission.

Empower NGA Workforce With Tech and Training

NGA will deliver knowledge, along with solutions. We will invest in our people

and the unique skills they bring by equipping them with expertise and experience 

to leverage the technology we will employ. NGA will provide guidance and best 

practices—both commercial and government—to ensure deployed solutions

most effectively fulfill demand, while supporting NGA’s core objectives.

Deliver With Velocity; Adapt to

Reality

NGA will deliver technology with 

the velocity and adaptability that 

the modern threat landscape 

demands. Operating under longterm planning constraints is 

inherent as a government 

agency, but we will adapt our 

plans and guidance to respond 

to the current mission 

environment to deliver timely 

and mission-relevant solutions.

Enable Technology 

Through Collaboration

NGA internal technologists 

will collaborate with 

industry to deliver the 

most relevant solutions 

for the mission. This 

collaboration mentality 

will encompass everything 

we do to develop the 

skills, capabilities, and 

tools we need.

P R I N C I P L E S

Our Principles

Deepen Understanding of 

Mission Customers

NGA will expand and enhance its 

relationships with customers to 

deeply understand mission needs 

and provide an improved, tailored 

technology experience.
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 11

NGA TODAY & TOMORROW
12 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

NGA Today & Tomorrow 

Findings

NGA, along with the broader defense 

and intelligence apparatus, is in an era 

where technology is deeply intertwined 

with mission objectives. Be it warfighter 

support, safety of navigation, or support 

to policy makers, NGA is leveraging 

technology at a continually accelerating 

pace to address present and future 

challenges. Improving the planning and 

execution of technology projects and 

scaling existing pockets of innovation 

are key enablers for all four goals 

defined in the NGA Strategy 2025.

While these are positive examples of digital transformation for NGA to build upon, the expectations of NGA’s 

workforce, IC customers, and the warfighter continue to rise. The workforce demands a seamless digital 

experience that includes improvements in foundational end-user systems as well as advanced analytic 

systems. Partner agencies want better collaboration during the GEOINT production cycle. Lastly, the warfighter 

needs simpler, ubiquitous access to GEOINT products. 

To build off the work that has already begun and to meet the evolving mission needs, we identified seven

findings, as well as corresponding pledges to address those findings. 

Technology is a key enabler for each of 

the goals in the NGA Strategy 2025

In the past few years, NGA has made definitive strides in how we build and deliver technology, including:

Increasing 

adoption of 

DevSecOps 

practices for 

specific initiatives

Leveraging more 

advanced and 

non-traditional 

data analysis for 

GEOINT 

production

Increasing 

commercial cloud 

usage 

Hiring and training 

a workforce of 

developers, data 

scientists, and IT 

professionals 

(e.g., Data Corps)

Strengthening 

linkages between 

mission and IT by 

standing up 

Integrated 

Program Offices 

(IPOs)

People

(Develop a 

world-Class 

Workforce)

Partnership

(Drive Global GEOINT

Enterprise)

Technology 

Planning & 

Execution Mission

Tomorrow

(Anticipate 

Opportunities & 

Foresee Threats)

Mission

Today

(Secure & Deliver Nation’s

Most Trusted GEOINT)
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 13

Finding 1: 

Desire for Increased Productivity

Focus on Getting 

the Basics Right

While NGA continues to constantly improve its infrastructure, the digital 

workspace still has challenges with desktop and virtual desktop 

infrastructure (VDI) disruptions, printing and scanning challenges, network 

outages, and login issues. Continued investment in tools, processes, and 

appropriate governance will enable builders and makers to scale 

innovations for the benefit and use of the enterprise. 

Pledge

Prioritize Mission 

Customer Needs

Finding 2: 

Need for the Mission Customer Perspective 

Unlock the 

Value 

of Data

Finding 3: 

Data Are Not Leveraged to Full Potential

Enable a 

Pathway for 

Enterprise 

Adoption

Finding 4: 

Need for Coordinated and Scaled Modernization Efforts

NGA’s new strategy has a keen focus on warfighter and policy maker support 

but capability development and delivery lifecycle focus heavily on internal 

users rather than a sustained focus on external GEOINT customers. This 

internal focus leads to more acute challenges for external customers who 

desire ease of access to GEOINT products in a consistent and reliable 

fashion. 

NGA realizes the significance of data during the GEOINT production cycle, 

but currently siloed environments and inconsistent implementations and 

governance limit the ability to readily access necessary data. Current 

enterprise data management processes and tools will need to enable data 

access through documented application program interfaces (APIs), as well 

as support the emerging flood of data types, to extend NGA and its 

customers’ capabilities in critical areas such as security, advanced 

analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

While NGA has made great improvements in integration with IPOs, 

directorates are modernizing independently of each other and proceed 

with limited orchestration or central governance. A conscious effort to 

provide enterprise-wide discovery and integration of mission-led IT is 

needed to reduce redundancy, centralize technology strategy, and provide 

more mature capabilities. 
14 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Finding 5: 

Program Over Product Focus 

Finding 6: 

Engagement With Industry 

Finding 7: 

Opportunity to Improve Return on Investment (ROI)

Meet Mission 

Needs With 

Product 

Management 

Practices

Improve 

Strategic Needs 

Definitions and 

Investments 

Approach

Make Data-Driven 

Technology 

Investments with 

Improved ROI 

NGA has begun to embrace building applications using DevSecOps

practices. But most NGA programs produce applications that live beyond 

their useful life, instead of products that are continually developed, iterated 

on, and replaced over time. Without focusing on hiring and empowering 

product management and user experience professionals, it is difficult for 

NGA to build and deliver products that delight customers and meet the 

needs of mission today and tomorrow. 

NGA directorates are empowered to engage industry to assist with specific 

mission and technology objectives that can sometimes have the desired 

outcome for small portions of the enterprise. While any particular 

engagement with industry may lead to a meaningful outcome, when 

assessed at scale, the impact is either minimal for the enterprise at large 

or redundant when compared to other initiatives. Strategic, coordinated 

management of desired mission and technology outcomes is needed to 

improve industry engagement at scale. 

While many users report high utility and mission impact, NGA could improve 

ROI measures by an increased use of business intelligence and data 

analytics. By institutionalizing these key metrics at the design phase of IT, 

NGA can increase transparency on how the overall IT portfolio is divided with 

respect to sustainment versus modernization and increased mission utility of 

its products and services.

Pledge
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 15

The geospatial intelligence profession is in an era of rapid transformation. To stay ahead of its 

adversaries, NGA will embrace new approaches to delivering its core mission. GEOINT is 

evolving beyond providing imagery and geospatial awareness to be the nexus of data fusion, 

responsible for the interpretation and visualization of highly disparate, differentiated data 

streams. While many challenges persist—including constantly changing threat landscapes, 

commoditization of previously restricted data sources, and ever-growing customer 

expectations—the opportunity to meet those challenges has never been greater. NGA 

technology leaders, in collaboration with their mission counterparts, must step up efforts to 

deliver enhanced capabilities and new technology products and platforms to secure and 

deliver the nation’s most trusted GEOINT. 

To accelerate the effort to achieve NGA’s 2025 desired target state, NGA will pursue five key 

initiatives that will provide the greatest impact over the next 18–24 months. 

While these initiatives have already started to take root across NGA, the Agency must develop 

a coordinated, cross-directorate focus in each of these areas to achieve the GEOINT 

transformation NGA and the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG) require. Each 

of these initiatives is critical to breaking down traditional information silos and improving how 

NGA focuses its resources toward developing technology. To maintain US information and 

intelligence dominance, NGA will successfully deliver on these initiatives. 

The Story of Today & 

The Vision of Tomorrow
16 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Bring AI, Cloud & 

HPC Into GEOINT

Mainstream 

Cloud and high-performance 

computing (HPC) is being used to 

respond to mission, but needs 

additional guidance on how to 

optimize it across the enterprise.

NGA builders and makers have selfservice access to large volumes of 

storage and compute, as well as 

modern software services, to augment 

intelligence, build innovative products, 

and grow NGA’s capabilities.

NGA has inconsistent approaches to 

engaging and planning with customers. 

Stakeholders report a lack of 

understanding of costs for applications, 

difficulty sunsetting legacy systems,

and a desire for a more agile way to 

adopt new products.

Internal and external customer 

needs are met through continuous 

product improvements and 

developments using product 

management and user experience 

skillsets and tradecraft.

Build With 

Customers

Key 

Today Initiative

Mission 

Tomorrow

Mission 

The Story of Today & The Vision of Tomorrow

Key initiatives address the needs of mission today to engineer 

a better tomorrow

Treat Data as a 

Strategic Asset

NGA internal and external customers 

consistently experience difficulty 

finding data and products and 

sharing them across domains, with IC 

and international partners, and with 

warfighters.

NGA’s workforce can easily and 

securely find and share products 

and data in standardized formats 

internally as well as with customers 

and partners, wherever and 

whenever they need them. 

Transform 

Digital Workspaces

Users within NGA frequently 

experience inconsistent functionality 

of desktop and productivity tools, 

severely limiting their overall 

efficiency and effectiveness.

Empower Builders 

and Makers

Developers experience confusion on the 

process and technology available to the 

enterprise for software development, 

resulting in added complexity, increased 

time to production, and multiple 

application environments. 

Builders across the enterprise work 

in an environment that provides 

modern development tools, 

facilitates compliance with security 

standards, and streamlines 

processes for implementation on 

all security domains.

NGA’s workforce has access to a 

responsive, personalized desktop 

experience and is able to deliver 

mission objectives with productivity 

tools tailored for the work. 
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 17

THE WAY AHEAD
18 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Problem Statement

NGA applications are too difficult to build and 

update as mission needs change, and NGA’s 

technology leaders rarely have full transparency 

or authority over the applications in use across 

the Agency. This approach to application 

development and management spreads 

resources thin and starves the builders and 

makers of the tools they need to deliver products 

at the speed of mission. 

Current State Challenges

 Agility: Many existing applications are based on a monolithic architecture, which was common 10+ years

ago, requires significant effort to change, and is often difficult to integrate with.

 User Experience: Many existing applications provide a single, bloated web application interface across

personas and workflows, which limits user experience (UX) and productivity.

 Capabilities: Software products across directorates often provide similar functionality to small user groups

rather than providing solutions that address the needs of the majority of enterprise users. In addition,

applications are not associated with mission capabilities, making it difficult to identify redundant

applications that perform the same function.

Over the past few years, NGA has started to address these challenges by attempting to converge on a unified 

software delivery approach that enables the “builder and maker” culture. For example, GEOINT Services stood 

up a new Digital Maker Services product line to enable DevSecOps, a new development-focused workforce was 

hired (DevCorps) to bolster NGA’s internal government software development competency, and multiple 

acquisition teams throughout NGA started to award new agile contracts. While all of these actions were 

important steps in the right direction, NGA will focus on key steps over the next 18–24 months to ensure a 

modern software delivery approach reaches all parts of NGA. 

Empower Builders and Makers

INITIATIVE OVERVIEW

Create an ecosystem that provides modern development tools, 

facilitates compliance with security standards, and streamlines 

processes for implementation on all security domains. Establish 

a development and deployment platform to support modern 

DevSecOps practices and API-first development. 

Current NGA Application Development Landscape

Layer Owner(s)

Application

Frameworks, Code

Platform Interface

OS, Middleware, Runtime

Infrastructure Interface

Virtualization

Infrastructure

Servers, Storage

Decentralized Throughout

Directorates

Decentralized Throughout

Directorates

Partially Centralized

to CIO-T

Mostly Centralized

to CIO-T
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 19

Recommendation

NGA’s key focus to develop a builder and maker culture should be to: 

1) Develop implementation guidance for NGA based on best practices and internal software development

experience gained over the past few years;

2) Add APIs to legacy applications to enable consistent integration patterns and easier interactions with

other systems;

3) Adopt a service-centric architecture as the prevailing framework for how most NGA applications will be

designed. NGA will focus on spreading these three concepts as consistently and widely as possible

throughout the enterprise; and

4) Implement, document, and broadly adopt reusable application platforms.

Value to NGA

NGA’s pivot to a more consistent DevSecOps experience for builders and makers will significantly improve its 

ability to design, develop, and deliver applications that support current and future GEOINT capabilities. 

Solution Overview & Benefits

The key mission outcome of enabling a builder and maker culture will be to advance the GEOINT tradecraft 

and rapidly develop and update products to meet emerging mission needs. Building applications API-first 

enables functionality to be more easily integrated and allows products to be independently and continually 

modernized over time.

An API-first approach includes supporting two sets of APIs—data and orchestration APIs and experience APIs. 

The data and orchestration APIs are the APIs that expose functionality in the back-end systems and services. 

The experience APIs are APIs that NGA can design to support the needs of the individual fit-for-purpose 

application experiences.

Transformational User Experience

Web/ Desktop 

Apps

API Mediation Layer

Custom

Services

Legacy

Monolithic

Applications

COTS

Enterprise

Apps

SaaS

Apps

Data

Warehouse/

Virtualization

Custom

Apps
20 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Monolithic applications without APIs are no longer sufficient, as they constrain agility in both back-end and 

front-end development. A modern service-centric architecture will enable: 

 Personalized user experiences (web, mobile, conversational, immersive, etc.) to internal and external

customers, including defense, intelligence, and civilian decision makers;

 Agility and rapid delivery of new application features and capabilities based on business needs; and

 Improved security, scalability, visibility, reliability, and resiliency.

Other crucial pieces to growing the builder and maker culture and moving to a service-centric architecture at 

NGA include (1) continuous integration and continuous deployments, including automated deployments to 

production; (2) active monitoring and alerting; and (3) automated unit, integration, and end-to-end testing in a 

deployment pipeline. All of these need to be in place so applications can be part of a service-centric 

architecture and used on a modern platform. 

NGA already has one cloud-native application platform that is actively managed and used, which is a critical 

first step to help the enterprise pivot to service-centric applications. This centrally managed platform delivers 

a uniform environment to developers across environments, enables an improved accreditation process that 

speeds time to deployment, and provides visibility to application owners about what is running and how it is 

being utilized. This type of work needs to be supported, resourced, and expanded, as NGA needs to be able to 

adapt to the rapidly changing and improving platform ecosystem in the commercial sector. 

Business

Functionality

Most Current NGA Apps Platform

as a Service

“Plumbing”

Higher Control Faster Time-to-Value CIO- Managed Self-Managed Self- Managed

Application

Frameworks, Code Application

Frameworks, Code

Platform Interface

OS, Middleware, 

Runtime

Infrastructure 

Interface

Virtualization

Infrastructure

Servers, Storage

SW Containers

Cloud Native

Application Platform

Recommended Focus

Application

Frameworks, Code

Platform

Interface

OS, Middleware, 

Runtime

Infrastructure 

Interface

Infrastructure

Servers, Storage

CIOManaged CIO-Managed

Platform

as a Service

Service Runtime

“Serverless”

Infrastructure

Compute,

Storage

Cloud Provider-Managed
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 21

Show the Way 

Develop Implementation 

Guidance for Application 

Development Teams 

Across NGA

API-Enable Legacy 

Applications and 

Utilize the ServiceCentric Framework for 

New Applications

Enhance Governance and 

Related Processes for New 

and Existing Applications

1 o Document best practices from the private sector and experience developing at NGA

over the past few years.

o For areas with multiple or conflicting tools, attempt to standardize on one tool or

document which tool should be used in specific scenarios.

o For areas where no tools currently exist, attempt to standardize on a single tool for

the enterprise.

o Provide implementation guidance in contracting language to enable consistent

development practices across internal and external software development.

o Add APIs and apply a modern service-centric architecture iteratively to large

applications, avoiding the temptation to fix direct integrations all at once or do entire

rewrites.

o Adopt DevSecOps practices and develop skills in API design, API-based integrations,

and full stack application development.

o Adopt iterative sprint cycles, tight feedback loops with users, continuous integration,

and cross-functional teams.

o Develop internal technical expertise in the frameworks, runtimes, and platforms

used to deploy and manage the services.

2

3

Apply an API-First 

Approach

o Provide additional coordination, cooperation, and governance across multiple roles,

teams, and potentially different groups.

o Support product focus by replacing one-size-fits-all governance with adaptive

governance that contextualizes decision rights while balancing product needs with

enterprise goals.

o Enable standard policies and implementation paths for building low and moving

code high as the norm, rather than the exception.

o Provide reliable application metrics to help builders and makers deploy new

capabilities that give mission stakeholders the greatest impact.

o Add standard contract language that products must have documented APIs that

follow the implementation guidance detailed above.

o In alignment with the “Build With Customers” initiative, apply a product-driven

mindset and consumer-driven design in implementing APIs.

5 Expand and Resource an 

Application Platform for 

Use Across the Enterprise

o Work with security experts to ensure that the enterprise application security strategy

and access policies are applied correctly in the platform layer rather than independently

configured and managed.

o Standardize how to get software libraries approved for use on the platform and across

NGA.

o Build automation into the application and integration platforms to streamline

observability, incident response, policy enforcement, and security of modern distributed

architectures, whether deployed on-premise, at the edge, or in a cloud environment.

o Provide funding resources to the application platform to allow for 24/7 support and

continued development to keep pace with open-source baseline updates.

4
22 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Problem Statement

The process for creating highly valuable, data-rich 

GEOINT products requires new toolsets and 

capabilities. These tools can be a force multiplier 

for accomplishing mission goals, enabling 

productivity, and supporting product offerings. 

The desktop continues to be the primary 

technology for NGA’s workforce and plays a 

significant role in the overall digital experience. 

The current decentralized approach to 

maintaining and refreshing workstations creates 

operational challenges in planning, maintaining, 

and investing in a desktop strategy that provides 

consistent and scalable ways to improve the 

workforce’s digital experience. 

Current State Challenges

 Productivity: The enterprise regularly experiences intermittent interruptions with productivity tools and

services, leading to frustration and lost productivity.

 Technology Refresh Cycles: The replacement of enterprise endpoint devices was deferred beyond the

planned refresh timelines due to competing priorities. A continued lack of investment in the digital

experience results in continued technical debt, increased shadow IT throughout the organization, and a

declining work environment that could undermine the organization's culture and ability to achieve its

desired target state.

 Contract Strategy Challenges: Existing legacy contracts are not aligned with performance incentives, which

often leads to unclear expectations and a lack of accountability for service delivery.

 Personalizing Experiences: NGA is limited in its ability to serve its diverse internal customers effectively

(e.g., imagery analysts, data scientists, developers, or back-office support). There is no consistent method

for managing needs of multiple “user roles” across a set of baseline personas for prioritized and

personalized service delivery, leading to a one-size-fits-all approach or the fulfillment of one-off

implementations for services.

Transform Digital Workspaces

Modernize desktop services and experience to provide proactive technology 

services for boosting productivity and workforce satisfaction.

INITIATIVE OVERVIEW
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 23

Solution Overview & Benefits

NGA recognizes both the importance of improving its approach to delivering GEOINT products to external 

customers and the direct link between internal employee experience and external customer satisfaction. 

Improvements to how NGA provisions and maintains technology for its builders, makers, and enterprise workforce 

will have a direct and significant impact to its external customers. 

The choice among physical desktops, VDI, and desktop as a service (DaaS) is a function of multiple 

considerations. As DaaS adds features to narrow the gap with VDI, NGA technology leaders will need to determine 

the degree to which DaaS will extend or replace virtual and/or physical desktops. To identify the optimal solution, 

NGA will consider factors including a rationalized application portfolio, solution complexity, data security 

requirements, and user experience. The ability for one style of deployment to meet all of the NGA workforce 

needs is unlikely, given the complexity and diversity of mission functions. Regardless of which desktop technology 

NGA uses, end users want a better experience, secure access to the applications and data, and the right amount 

of governance that can improve install, migration, and configuration processes. 

NGA will ultimately adopt a hybrid workspace approach if both on-premise VDI and cloud-based DaaS are 

required, selecting the most effective strategy based on the existing VDI footprint and speed of cloud service 

adoption.

In order to mature the NGA workforce’s digital workspaces, NGA will:

1) Provide personalized desktop services for multiple enterprise persona types;

2) Refine refresh processes to incorporate new industry offerings at a faster pace;

3) Enforce governance mechanisms; and

4) Allow the self-service installation of approved, common software packages.

Value to NGA

NGA’s pivot to more capable workforce tools will result in greater workforce productivity and help to accelerate 

improved engagement with NGA customers. 

Recommendation

NGA 

Builders & 

Makers

Internal NGA 

End Users

External NGA 

Customers
24 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Creating an engaging and empowering digital workplace experience has become a cornerstone for digital 

business success. NGA’s sourcing, procurement, and vendor management leaders will center new managed 

workspace service contracts on improving the digital experience, instead of on traditional IT Service Level 

Agreements. Benefits can include but are not limited to: 

 Mapping the existing “user roles” to end-user personas and their different IT services needs, and relating

those to productivity improvement opportunities for the mission. Persona mapping identifies archetypical

users whose needs represent the needs of a larger group of users to facilitate service delivery management.

 Metrics and incentives for achieving the transformed digital experience by identifying two or three mission key

performance indicators (KPIs) that are easy to measure and have a positive effect on the digital workspace

experience, and tracking those metrics automatically and transparently, so anyone in the organization can

see how NGA is performing against them.

 Self-service installation of approved, common software packages to enable NGA employees to access and

use the open-source, government-developed, and commercial applications and products they need without

creating a help desk ticket.

Establishing Experience-Level Agreements (XLAs) With a Focus

on the User’s Digital Experience

Mission 

Value

NGA Workforce

Builders and Makers

External 

Customers

Internal 

Customers

The Execution Gap:

XLAs can help fill the 

execution gap between 

builders and makers and 

mission value. 

Technology on its

own does not deliver 

transformational outcomes.
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 25

Show the Way 

Gather User Persona 

Requirements

Establish Service 

Delivery Aligned 

With Personas

1 o Identify a cross-functional team that can work across directorates to incorporate

technical and mission-specific input to define and rationalize each persona type.

o Establish a process for gathering and assessing both qualitative and quantitative

data to create delivery services tailored to enterprise personas. Data points and

requirements gathered for each persona will include, but are not limited to:

• Application capabilities and services required to perform mission duties/role(s)

• Bandwidth

• Collaboration

• Visualization

• Interfaces

• Data/information source/utilization

• Latency

Note: A persona could include multiple NGA “user roles”

o Prioritize and establish the cadence process and governance mechanisms for

supporting tiered service delivery.

o Assess opportunities for enabling software automation for end users, leveraging

baseline personas.

2

4 Reassess the LongTerm Refresh Strategy

o Reassess the long-term refresh strategy with funding and resourcing for the

organization, leveraging lessons learned from the near-/mid-term user persona

service delivery, contracting, and budgeting.

3 Enable Self-Service 

Software Delivery

o Monitor usage of software downloaded and software requested but not yet available

to prioritize which applications should be available via self-service.

o Expand the number of open-source, government-developed, and commercial

applications and products available to users without having to interact with a human

or ticketing system.

5 Define and Track 

Metrics

o Identify two or three mission KPIs that are crucial to the digital workspace experience.

o Track those metrics automatically and transparently, so anyone in the organization can

see how NGA is doing against them.
26 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

The traditional approach to program 

management is insufficient to support the 

rate of change required by NGA’s current 

and future technology initiatives. NGA has 

focused historically on tool acquisition to fill 

capability gaps. Much of this tool acquisition 

has occurred without central oversight or 

consistent, direct user input and has 

resulted in both shadow IT and a lack of full 

lifecycle planning, increasing the burden on 

both resources and infrastructure. The move 

from programs to products will be key to 

enabling continuous modernization efforts

across all NGA directorates.

Problem Statement

Current State Challenges

 Capabilities: As NGA develops new applications without phasing out existing or older applications, there are

significant capability redundancies across the NGA enterprise because of the focus on the acquisition of

tools to bridge capability gaps.

 Spend: Limited product management results in ballooning sustainment costs for applications because of a

lack of full lifecycle planning.

 Interface Between Technology and Customers: NGA has not developed consistent ways to engage and plan

with customers when a new mission need is identified.

 UX Focus: There is limited expertise and focus in UX design across NGA, with fragmented and nascent

capabilities, which leads to applications being underutilized and frustrated customers.

Product 

Management DevSecOps CI/CD

Tool Focus Process Focus Customer Focus

NGA has historically focused its efforts on DevSecOps and 

initiated Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous 

Delivery (CD) but not product management.

Investment in all three areas will result in modern product delivery 

that is aligned with mission customer needs.

Build With Customers

INITIATIVE OVERVIEW

Focus on meeting mission customer needs and empowering product managers 

and user experience professionals. Employ product management to modernize 

offerings and capabilities with a common vision, strategy, and objectives. Build 

and iterate on products customers love and that meet their evolving needs.
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 27

Recommendation

The product management model is geared toward providing 

value through technology with a focus on the customer’s 

requirements and experience to accelerate mission outcomes.

Shifting focus from programs to GEOINT product lines will help 

NGA: 

 Focus more directly on customer needs and requirements;

 Better align funding, development resources, and

management support to the organization’s most critical

mission capabilities;

 Reduce complexity and improve the experience for all users;

 Increase speed and flexibility to respond to changing

customers’ and mission partners’ needs;

 Simplify and rationalize its technology portfolio while

modernizing and redesigning core legacy applications to

meet the needs of today and tomorrow; and

 Guide the sunsetting of legacy systems and adoption of new

technology.

NGA’s key focus to improve its ability to build with customers should be to: 

1) Work across the NSG to understand the wide variety of customer needs to develop a common product

vision, strategy, and objectives;

2) Understand the current capabilities within NGA and develop product lines;

3) Prepare the cultural and organizational shifts required to hire and empower product managers, designers,

and user experience professionals; and

4) Grow the community of NGA employees delivering products focused on user needs to increase

transparency and trust among the workforce and NGA customers.

Value to NGA

NGA’s successful shift to product-centric delivery will result in the ability to build and acquire capabilities based 

on mission needs with a focus on minimum viable products that will be delivered in weeks or months, not 

years. Products will undergo continuous iteration by development teams that are as close to the user as 

possible. Lastly, improved UX design will provide critical user-centric capabilities to ensure maximum adoption 

of new products. 

Solution Overview & Benefits

Impactful product management 

occurs at the nexus

Technology

NGA’s

Mission

Customer

Experience
28 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Ultimately, NGA will need coordination across all directorates to develop strong product strategies and 

roadmaps. This whole-of-Agency effort includes hiring and training, the way contracts are written and managed, 

and the way new products get tested before release; it is a cultural shift as much as a technical one. 

Quality is the foundation of successful applications, both those that are new and those undergoing 

modernization efforts. Successful development teams across NGA will test and validate their applications for 

efficacy, reliability, security, and performance to ensure quality as part of the product management process. 

Modern applications require effective, automated monitoring to understand reliability as well as system usage 

for product decisions.

Especially important to this approach is the concept of balanced product teams, including software engineers, 

designers, data scientists, and product managers working together and directly with end users. These 

balanced teams must constantly build and earn trust over time, iteratively improving the products they deliver. 

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Product management aligns technologies by how NGA consumes them, not how they are produced. It facilitates the 

better management of the people, processes, data, and technologies that support mission outcomes with 

established standing teams to continually enhance and innovate. It is not about replacing current skills with new 

ones, but rather balancing the traditional program management skills with product management, and having them 

work together. 

Product managers will work with business relationship managers (BRMs), who will serve as the strategic interface 

with assigned program offices and a trusted advisor for technology. The BRM’s main focus will be to establish and

maintain value-driven, strategic relationships with one or more program offices and proactively manage mission 

requirements. The BRM will provide direction and guidance to mission partners to enable the best technology 

solutions that meet the mission needs. 

Program

Characteristics









Product

Characteristics

Benefits of evolving from program to product management

Funding for the life of the program

(based on resources and time)

Funding for the life of the program

(based on mission needs)

Work stops at a fixed date Work stops when product retired

Change is avoided Change is embraced

Focus on plan Focus on features

Tracked by mission value/user

experience

Tracked by program/schedule 

variance

Focused investments

Lifecycle planing

Cultural shift

Requirements focus

Mission impact focus
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 29

Show the Way 

Develop a Product 

Strategy and Product 

Objectives

Define NGA’s Product 

Lines Based on the 

Feedback of Mission and 

Technology Stakeholders

Develop a Product 

Management Migration 

Roadmap

1 o Determine the key objectives for the product management discipline for NGA.

o Incorporate UX design considerations into product strategy.

o Determine the proper workforce requirements, such as the skills needed as well as

alignment and positioning of product managers within NGA’s workforce.

o Develop an NGA product management strategy.

o Determine the key, achievable areas from the customer point of view in which NGA

can deliver immediate value in product management for the workforce.

o Determine the key defining and differentiating features of the product lines.

o Determine the responsible entity for the chosen product lines.

o Conduct a maturity assessment to understand NGA’s ability to deliver the product

lines and the existing gaps.

o Determine the appropriate roadmaps for each product line.

o Develop an NGA product roadmap to address any current state gaps to deliver the

desired future state of product management capabilities for the Agency.

o Coordinate change management investments required to address the prioritized

gaps.

3

4

Embed Testing into the 

Product Lifecycle 

o Design an effective testing initiative that incorporates developer-led best practices

such as continuous integration, static code analysis, peer review, and unit testing.

o Incorporate usability testing with customers.

o Use and reuse tests through a layered strategy that leverages test automation at

each tier of the application stack.

5

Hire and Empower 

Product Managers, 

Designers, and User 

Experience Staff

2 o Adopt a multidisciplinary team-building approach by targeting team members who can

be both generalists and specialists.

o Strengthen the business relationship manager role that builds and maintains strong

relationships with mission partners and acts as a liaison between NGA technology

teams and the mission partner.

o Establish a product manager role that drives all product launch activities for new and

existing technologies and applications, as well as ensuring user needs are understood

and met through regular releases and updates.

o Establish UX experience roles that drive a “fit-for-purpose app” design approach

utilizing customer segments, personas, user flows, prototyping, and user research.

Develop an Enterprise 

Communication Plan

o Determine the best mechanism to communicate each step of the roadmap activities

to the workforce for maximum early buy-in.

o Communicate product lines and expectations early and often to the workforce to

promote transparency in the process.

6
30 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Problem Statement

A core element of NGA’s vision is to leverage 

data as a strategic asset to continually 

improve the impact its GEOINT products have 

for its customers. 

Presently, NGA has gaps in awareness of its 

information assets, where these assets are 

located, and how they should be 

disseminated, leading to information-sharing 

challenges both within NGA directorates and

outside NGA with its customers. 

The operating model to facilitate information 

sharing is immature, as mission data are 

housed in multiple disparate systems, across 

multiple domains, with a lack of a 

comprehensive data taxonomy or a common 

governance mechanism.

Current State Challenges

 Siloed Data: There is a lack of awareness of the data that reside within the organization, which leads to

challenges in locating and coordinating access to data for exploitation, organizing data in new ways, and

disseminating data to those who need it.

 Real-Time Collaboration: Basic sharing of data, files, products, and content can be challenging across

directorates, with mission partners, and with customers.

 Cross-Domain Features: Data and information reside across multiple security domains with limited

features or functionality to enable discoverability and accessibility where customers need it most.

 Risk-Averse Posture: In an effort to address risks associated with unauthorized disclosures and data

leakage, the Agency sometimes errs on the side of over-classifying data and information, which inhibits

leveraging data as an asset.

Treat Data as a Strategic Asset

Treat data as a strategic asset, enhancing and enforcing data governance for 

discovery, curation, and use of traditional and nontraditional data, as well as 

analytics and reporting. 

INITIATIVE OVERVIEW

NGA leadership must focus on these efforts to establish the 

governance, technology, and security foundations for datasharing across NGA.

Sporadic automation

and innovation,

frequent issues

Services and solutions,

efficiency and

effectiveness

Mission and operating

model transformation

Isolated, disengaged

internally and externally

Directive, compliancedriven, risk-averseDynamic, collaborative,

risk-aware

Center-out governance

control-oriented

Tactical, siloed

governance

Adaptive, contextual,

platform-oriented,

trust-based

Technology-centric Process-centric Product-centric, people 

and outcomes

Outputs and

Outcomes

Mission

Engagement

Governance

Capabilities

Delivery 

Focus

NGA Will Refocus its Operating Models to Build the Data and

Analytic Foundations to Support Mission Objectives

Mission Yesterday Mission Today Mission Tomorrow

}
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 31

Recommendation 

In order to harness the power of data and channel information within the Agency, to mission partners, and to 

customers, NGA will:

1) Identify and catalog the data NGA has today, as well as the data required to meet NGA’s mission-critical

priorities and use cases;

2) Grow a data-driven workforce by supporting activities such as creating a data-literacy baseline for new

contributors across the Agency, training individuals to increase their data knowledge and skills, and

employing real-time decision automation;

3) Identify infrastructure modifications needed to support increased usage of data and required new

tradecraft and technologies, including considerations for data security;

4) Identify and implement technology proofs of concept to support data governance initiatives; and

5) Create a master data management (MDM) program to support mission-critical priorities, products, and

services.

Value to NGA

A holistic approach to improving data-centric capabilities will accelerate NGA’s ability to harness data across 

the NSG to support the exploitation and evolution of GEOINT. NGA will also empower data stewards across the 

enterprise to leverage technology and facilitate automation and augmentation efforts where appropriate. 

Solution Overview & Benefits

The Agency has initiated efforts to become a more data-centric organization by reviewing its data governance 

practices and updating its data strategy to support NGA Strategy 2025 mission objectives. 

Applying an integrated approach to data management connects collective actions of the enterprise to enable:

 Improved efficiency in accessing secure

and reliable data in a timely manner.

 Consolidation of data and superior data

quality.

 Enhanced customer and mission

partner data sharing and reusability.

 Advancement of anticipatory

capabilities.
32 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Effective data governance combined with corresponding technology investments is key to enhancing data 

quality, reliability, and access. NGA will build a data-centric program that delivers value to NSG; enables data 

discoverability, access, and reuse; and ensures NGA has the required skills and training to succeed in a datacentric environment and to avoid the “costs” associated with bad data.

Streamlined data governance will be a shared responsibility among the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief 

Data Officer (CDO), CTO, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and other key stakeholders, including legal 

and compliance offices. The CDO will establish NGA’s data priorities through the NGA Data Strategy and the 

high-level operating model in the Data Governance Operating Model. Using these strategic documents, NGA will 

identify the right technology insertion points to streamline this data governance capability and set the 

foundation for implementing a technology-enabled solution. Examples of technology solutions to enable and 

streamline NGA’s data governance activities include, but are not limited to:

 Project data evaluation: Data inventory and catalog, data storage, data integration, data discovery, and

data modeling tools.

 Metadata updates: Minimum metadata standards and metadata management solutions.

 Data ownership: Data inventory, metadata management, and data modeling.

 Data governance metrics: Data reporting tools, data quality, master data management, and data

management and security.

Reasons Why Governance Fails

 Implies control, not value

 Slows down mission

 More an IT concern than

business

 Failed too many times before

 Too big in overall scope

 Nice to have but not core to 

what we do or need

How to Make Governance Succeed

 Provide right level of enterprise

control/coordination with the

agility and flexibility for NGA to 

meet mission objectives

 Differentiate between the

governance, decisions, and

controlled actions that need to 

occur at the enterprise level

 Support a variety of different

activities (e.g., collaboration to

acquisition)
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 33

Show the Way 

Align MissionCritical Priorities 

With Data Initiatives

Evaluate Enterprise 

Capabilities and Deficits

Improve Enterprise Data 

Governance and Set 

Standards

1

2

4

Enable Data Access in a 

Secure Manner 

5

3

o Enable data to be accessed via APIs without manual process intervention.

o Identify infrastructure requirements for implementing the data strategy (e.g.,

collecting, storing, processing, and sharing information).

o Refine and adapt data security requirements to protect data properly while allowing

sharing among authorized users.

Empower Workforce to 

Support Data-Centric 

Transformation

o Identify and prioritize use cases that support analytics, information sharing, and

Agency operations that NGA will support for mission today and mission tomorrow.

Each use case should highlight (at a minimum):

• Needs of both internal and external stakeholders

• Stakeholder value

• Mission value

• Information value

• Data levers

• Data assets

o Develop a synopsis of capabilities that exist within the enterprise to support missioncritical priority use cases and assess gaps that could impact technology

implementation efforts.

o Identify technology opportunities and overlaps to address requirements and

redundancies for data-centric capabilities with technology solutions.

o Refine the existing NGA data governance framework to ensure data are identified

and exposed to the appropriate NSG stakeholders while maintaining privacy, security, 

and compliance.

o Update/create an NGA-wide conceptual data model to depict the high-level, stable

entities and data relationships.

o Rationalize enterprise-class data tools to help automate data and analytic services to

conduct metadata management and to automate master data management.

o Assess NGA’s data workforce to determine roles and responsibilities necessary for

data-centric governance, processes, and technology implementation.

o Identify where gaps exist in existing talent pool and strategy for upskilling, insourcing,

and/or outsourcing.

o Obtain executive leadership support of proposed talent strategy and investment

requirements.
34 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Cloud computing continues to be a platform for 

innovation on which a variety of GEOINT capabilities 

will be based. Whether it is serving and storing 

geospatial data, enabling microservices for more 

efficient application development, developing 

computer vision algorithms, or analyzing multisourced information, cloud and edge computing will 

play a central role in countless mission and IT 

functions for NGA. 

Despite pockets of progress and well-intentioned 

planning efforts, NGA has struggled to make a 

coordinated and purposeful migration to the cloud.

Additionally, in order to truly benefit from advanced 

technologies involving AI and HPC, NGA will need to 

improve its ability to execute coordinated, large-scale 

compute projects, whether they are cloud, onpremise, or hybrid in nature. 

Problem Statement

Current State Challenges

 Execution: Compute infrastructure has been acquired, maintained, and deployed on a case-by-case basis

without sufficient consideration for broader coordination or data integration.

 Cost Expectations: NGA leaders and practitioners expect cost savings when migrating systems to the cloud,

when in fact those savings are difficult to achieve. Data show that typical organizations experience a nearterm 20 percent increase in hosting cost when moving workloads to the cloud, with the potential for longterm savings only if cloud workloads are managed carefully and on-premise counterparts are truly sunsetted.

 Network: Existing NGA networks spanning unclassified and classified domains may not be able to

accommodate bandwidth and performance requirements for growing workloads.

 Workforce: Many cloud, HPC, and AI-related projects need specialized skillsets. Government roles take time

to fill and subsequently train while industry subject matter experts (SMEs) can also be expensive and hard

to find.

 Hybrid Cloud Strategy: Not all HPC or AI workloads can be migrated into the cloud. Starting cloud journeys with 

non-cloud-friendly workloads often results in failed initiatives.

Bring AI, Cloud & HPC Into 

GEOINT Mainstream

Establish enterprise-wide access to modern HPC and cloud 

offerings to handle data that support automation, 

augmentation, and AI initiatives. 

INITIATIVE OVERVIEW
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 35

Recommendation 

NGA’s key focus to mature its infrastructure and compute access and enable AI includes the need to:

1) Develop use cases and a governance body that drives the selection of which compute environment is

suitable for specific workloads and tasks. Ensure use cases are based on common capabilities that can

support different mission programs;

2) Iterate upon the existing NGA Hybrid Cloud Strategy to ensure it considers multi-cloud, edge, and onpremise offerings and capabilities;

3) Select compute location for applications by mission need, with a priority to leverage cloud capabilities,

including products and services built by the cloud service providers, whenever possible;

4) Baseline AI use cases for automation and augmentation with a focus on both mission and business

process enablement, as well as the ethical use of AI; and

5) Select edge products and technologies that focus on key challenges such as network optimization, data

management, analytics, and autonomous operations at the edge.

Value to NGA

The future of GEOINT requires robust offerings and coordination across infrastructure, applications, and data 

teams. If NGA can execute a holistic strategy to embrace hybrid cloud, integrate the edge, and improve its 

HPC access, it will be in a prime position to meet future GEOINT technology requirements.

Solution Overview & Benefits

Despite higher adoption rates in industry, cloud migration and adoption have only recently experienced a surge 

across the DoD and IC—a trend that will accelerate as NGA continues to tackle cloud-related acquisition, 

governance, and security challenges while industry providers simultaneously mature their IC-specific cloud 

offerings. Throughout these industries, automation and AI combined with cloud have steadily improved the 

quality, efficiency, and timeliness of human decisions.
36 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Cloud and AI are becoming a prerequisite for much of what is considered to be the future of the GEOINT 

tradecraft—whether it is incorporating diverse data streams from the exponential growth of sensors, leveraging 

new imagery sources, or evolving foundation GEOINT. Large portions of the IC have already started benefiting 

from these modalities, and NGA recognizes it must coordinate its own hybrid solutions to achieve the NGA 

Strategy 2025. NGA’s future compute environment will not merely be a more efficient version of today’s

infrastructure but, rather, an environment to enable emerging technologies and provide improved governance, 

increased cost transparency, increased reliability, and broader geographic distribution, among other benefits.

However, compute is evolving not to a “cloud only” future, but instead to a dynamic mix of on-premise and

off-premise computing. Core systems, including ones inextricably linked to on-premise compute, will not 

disappear. Where those highly customized systems bring unique value to the NGA mission, they will continue 

to get new investment.

The amount of computation devoted to AI will increase dramatically over the next five years, as NGA cultivates 

new use cases for AI beyond traditional AI techniques. As standard processors no longer deliver the predictable 

performance gains predicted by Moore’s Law, accelerators must play a primary role in adding compute 

horsepower. Specialized accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs) will be required for many AI

machine learning (ML) models. However, a capital-intensive “build” strategy for such infrastructure is not the 

only solution, as this horsepower is also available through DoD-/IC-specific cloud service providers and ML

software as a service (SaaS) products.
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 37

Solution Overview & Benefits (cont’d)

Use cases should drive the selection of AI technology. NGA’s technology leaders must partner with major programs 

to identify and prioritize AI use cases and select infrastructure based on the specific needs. In other words, 

compute frameworks and decisions should be baked into NGA’s existing technology development workflow. For 

example, when mission data are cloud-hosted, data gravity recommends a selection of compute resources within 

those clouds for training AI systems. Ethical use of AI, as well as recognizing and working within compliance, legal, 

and oversight requirements, must be core to NGA’s AI approach.

NGA will build a community of practice around automation, augmentation, and AI to leverage the Agency’s 

knowledge for accelerating adoption across the enterprise. Crucially, such teams can identify when to prefer 

classical ML techniques over skill, and infrastructure-heavy deep learning techniques where cloud and/or HPC 

capabilities can provide game-changing abilities for NGA.

Despite the stereotypes, AI capabilities and advancements are not trending to replace human beings. Rather, they 

are accelerating or augmenting the human workforce’s ability to acquire knowledge and improve productivity. As 

GEOINT evolves beyond providing imagery and geospatial awareness toward being the nexus of data fusion, even 

AI use cases focused on augmentation will require exponentially greater infrastructure and application resources. 

These resources must be coordinated across the NGA enterprise to ensure mission success. Multiple AI 

environments dedicated to specific mission functions without the benefit of interconnections to other mission 

functions will have diminishing value. 

As compute shifts to a mix of on- and off-premise, the near-total reliance of IT on centralized computing will change 

as certain NGA projects appear at the edge. Edge use cases will vary widely, with a variety of partnerships and 

ecosystems delivering for different requirements. While application needs (including latency, bandwidth, 

privacy, and autonomy) will push computing to the edge, other factors will shape the nature of that computing. NGA 

technology leaders should use the physical location, nature of the endpoints, amount of information required, and 

needed resilience to dictate edge compute adoption.
38 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

v

Show the Way 

Develop Holistic Hybrid 

Cloud, Edge, and OnPremise Strategy

Deliver AI Platforms

Plan and Coordinate HPC 

Investments Across the 

Enterprise

1 o Iterate and improve the existing NGA Hybrid Cloud Strategy to include multi-cloud

considerations.

o Evaluate distributed cloud and edge options and establish a governance body that

drives the selection of which compute environment is suitable for specific workloads

and tasks.

o Rethink the network architecture for a hybrid end-state.

o Develop and enhance the ability to discover, build, and share analytics outputs.

o Move to constantly operating and streaming analytics as the norm.

o Equip data scientists and developers to monitor, integrate, and customize machineassisted models.

o Minimize risk by using workload profiles to identify cloud-capable HPC applications

based on their parallelism and resource consumption profiles.

o Increase cloud adoption success rates by using the right set of middleware designed

to simplify usability of cloud-hosted HPC resources.

o Address input/output (I/O) performance challenges in the cloud by utilizing the

latest-generation techniques that enable parallel file I/O capabilities in the HPC

environment.

3

4

Build a Community of 

Practice for AI 

o Attach AI to an existing COE or create a new AI COE.

o Select use cases that augment workers but do not set replacement as a goal. Choose

measurements such as faster resolution, improved breadth of issues addressed, or

customer satisfaction.

o Leverage cloud to build converged AI platforms with multiple mission stakeholders.

o Upskill workforce to support diverse data and analytics pipelines.

o Promote ethical and transparent AI use and explainable AI frameworks.

5

Create a Hosting Decision 

Framework

o Create a framework for all of NGA that selects an infrastructure service depending on

the unique characteristics of the application by mission need, with a priority to

leverage cloud capabilities.

o Empower an NGA Cloud Center of Excellence (COE) to tailor and govern cloud

solutions that should be available to the entire enterprise.

o Drive new ROI analysis that provides increased cost transparency into infrastructure

spend and the value and/or savings provided by adopting new hosting solutions.

2
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 39

Appendixes
40 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Appendix A

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon

NGA will address real-time events and improve its ability to understand the world and anticipate future events for 

increasing decision advantage of decision makers, policy makers, partners, warfighters, and emergency responders 

to act swiftly and adapt faster ahead of adversaries.

Industry offers several solutions and products that will deliver tremendous value to NGA and its stakeholders. Of 

these key technologies, NGA will prioritize a near-term focus on:

 AI to augment the human analytical workforce to deliver timely intelligence faster in response to an increasing

pace of mission requirements.

 Image and data analytics to handle the increasing volume of data coming from both classified and

commercial sources.

 Iterative and responsive development processes (including DevSecOps and agile development) for NGA to

deliver relevant application capabilities at the speed of mission.

 Data security that protects NGA’s most valuable products, making them available to the right audience, for the

right purpose, at the right time.

NGA’s forthcoming Technology Focus Areas Playbook will provide additional details on the current and future 

technologies NGA plans to invest in, as well as how industry can best interact with NGA. 

Build With Customers Bring AI, Cloud, HPC Into GEOINT Mainstream Treat Data as a Strategic 

Asset

Empower Builders & Makers Transform Digital Workspaces

Near-Term Horizon Long-Term Horizon

DevOps 

Toolchain

ServiceCentric

Architecture

Platform as 

a Service AI Developer 

Toolkits

API 

Marketplaces

Hybrid Application 

Platforms

Desktop as 

a Service

Unified 

Workspaces

Geospatial 

Platforms

Volumetric 

Displays

Knowledge 

Graphs

Data and Analytics

Governance

Master Data 

Management

Location 

Intelligence

Synthetic 

Data

Augmented 

Analytics

DataOps

Enterprise 

Scale Agile

Design 

Thinking

Product-centric 

Delivery

Design 

Ops

Self Integrating 

Applications

Microapps

Edge 

Computing

Video/Image 

Analytics Deep Neural 

Networks

Quantum 

Computing

AI PaaS

Mobile 

Customer

Interaction

This view provides a baseline of industry-leading practices that NGA should consider in the near and long term. The 

technology opportunities on the near-term horizon are key prerequisites for the Agency to achieve more ambitious 

and transformative technologies on the long-term horizon. The terminology used in this view is consistent with 

industry parlance—detailed definitions are included in the pages that follow.

Crowdsourced 

Development

Self-Service 

Data and 

Analytics Augmented 

Intelligence

SoftwareDefined 

Compute

In-Memory

Computing

Data and Analytics

Services
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 41

Long-Term Horizon 

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon (cont’d)

Technology Priority Definitions

Empower Builders and Makers

Near-Term Horizon 

 DevOps Toolchain: A DevOps toolchain comprises tools used to support DevOps pipeline activity and

provide fast feedback. It typically covers six main activities: plan, create, verify, release, configure, and

monitor. Pipeline activities have started with discrete tools for various steps, but vendors can deliver

solutions right across the application development and delivery cycle. The mix of tools is determined by

business need, product platform, language, product domain, and the skills of the people who will use

the tools.

 Service-Centric Architecture: The mesh app and service architecture is implemented as a set of distributed,

loosely coupled, autonomous components, including multiple fit-for-purpose apps and composable backend services that support the distinct workflows of each app. Each app provides an optimized user

experience for specific personas and interface channels. Apps and services communicate via mediated

APIs. Those APIs can cross application and organizational boundaries, enabling a flexible mesh of

capabilities.

 Platform as a Service: Platform as a service (PaaS) is a type of a cloud offering that delivers application

infrastructure (middleware) capabilities as a service. There are multiple types of PaaS (xPaaS), including,

among many more, application platform as a service (aPaaS), integration PaaS (iPaaS), API management

PaaS (apimPaaS), function PaaS (fPaaS), business analytics PaaS (baPaaS), internet of things PaaS (IoT

PaaS), and database PaaS (dbPaaS). PaaS capability can be delivered as provider-managed or selfmanaged, multitenant or dedicated.

 Crowdsourced Development: Crowdsourced developers are employees who create new business

applications for consumption, normally by themselves but potentially with others, using development and

runtime environments sanctioned (or at least not actively forbidden) by corporate IT or the enterprise lineof-business organizations.

 AI Developer Toolkits: AI developer toolkits are applications and software development kits (SDKs) that

abstract data science platforms, frameworks, analytic libraries, and devices to enable software engineers

to incorporate AI into new or existing applications.

 API Marketplaces: An API marketplace is a platform for API providers to publish and market APIs.

Consumers—mainly developers—use API marketplaces to discover APIs and (in some cases) purchase

access to APIs. API marketplaces differ from API portals since they are more likely to include APIs from

multiple providers, may showcase applications (e.g., mobile apps) using the APIs, and may involve API

monetization. Although public API marketplaces are more well-known, a growing number of organizations,

including banks, now have deployed internal API marketplaces.

 Hybrid Application Platform: A hybrid application platform is an IT organization’s governed portfolio of onpremise, on-edge, and cloud-based application platform components that supports past, present, and

future applications—including legacy, heritage, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), SaaS, homegrown, thirdparty, and digital business applications.
42 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon (cont’d)

 Desktop as a Service: Desktop as a service provides a virtualized desktop experience, delivered to a

customer on demand from a vendor-owned, remotely hosted location, via a utility or operating expenditure

consumption model. The service must include basic user image provisioning. However, it may have a wider

scope of application and security lifecycle management.

 Unified Workspaces: The unified workspace is a user-centric computing model that delivers a contextual

and adaptive work experience designed to empower individuals and drive productivity and satisfaction. The

strategy allows for personal preferences for devices and, in its most advanced form, the application of

analytics and machine learning to provide alerts, suggest actions, and automate responses across

applications within the workspace experience.

 Geospatial Platforms: Geospatial platforms include PaaS and data-as-a-service offerings in the context of 

spatial data processing, such as web mapping, mobile geospatial apps, location services, imagery services, 

analytics, and geoevent processing. They also include other features such as digital marketplaces with 

subscription-based licensing and revenue-sharing mechanisms for partner- and customer-generated apps 

and content.

Near-Term Horizon 

Long-Term Horizon 

 Mobile Customer Interaction: The mobile customer interaction channel enables the delivery of information

and services to customers using smartphones or tablet computers. Communications and services delivered 

via SMS are included. It also includes responsive design websites that render well on mobile devices, as 

well as native applications for leading mobile operating systems including Apple iOS and Google Android.

 Volumetric Displays: Volumetric displays create visual representations of objects in three dimensions, with a 

360-degree spherical viewing angle in which the image changes as the viewer moves. Unlike most 3D

planar displays, which create the illusion of depth through a stereoscopic or an autostereoscopic technique, 

volumetric displays create lifelike images in 3D space.

 Knowledge Graphs: Knowledge graphs are data structures in which disparate data about entities (including

people, companies, and digital assets) are codified as a graph—a network of nodes and links (“edges”)—

rather than tables of rows and columns. This enables information (“knowledge”) to be located (knowledge

graph as an index) or synthesized (knowledge graph as a data source) on demand.

Transform Digital Workspaces

Technology Priority Definitions
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 43

 Enterprise-Class Agile Development: Enterprise-class agile development is the use of business-outcomedriven, customer-centric, collaborative, and cooperative practices with continual stakeholder feedback.

Feedback is done in dynamic and changing heterogeneous environments throughout the software lifecycle,

to support continuous delivery of enterprise-class adaptive products and services.

 Design Thinking: Design thinking is a multidisciplinary process used to improve the design of everything from

business software to consumer products and services. It is a creative process starting with empathy for users

and the gathering of insight into their needs and motivations. Based on this insight, it is possible to identify

solutions that users would value. These are then developed using an iterative, experimental approach. Deep

customer insight combined with a creative process is ideal for digital innovation and digital product

development.

 Product-Centric Delivery: Digital business requires a fundamental shift in delivery model for application

organizations, from project and application to backlog, product, and platform. This shift allows the

organization to respond more rapidly to demands using agile methods, combined with a continuously

updated backlog. It also allows the organization to focus on delivering the most important and customersatisfying features first, rather than waiting for long-lasting projects to complete.

Long-Term Horizon 

 DesignOps: DesignOps is a set of product design practices that combines user experience, product

management, and technology operations to enable efficient and DevOps-compatible plans, estimates,

and processes that increase quality, enable collaboration, and shorten product delivery timelines.

DesignOps impacts product design throughout the entire product lifecycle, from initial discovery to final

testing and launch, but is primarily focused on product definition, concept exploration/development, testing,

and design production.

 Self-Integrating Applications: Self-integrating applications use a combination of automated service discovery,

metadata extraction and mapping, and machine learning to enable applications to integrate themselves into

an existing application portfolio.

 Microapps: A microapp is a discrete, yet reusable and portable, app function, process, or workflow that

operates within the context of a larger app or application—and across multiple apps or applications. The

microapp runs as a self-contained activity, but may rely on services, such as identity services or access to

location data, provided by an app client runtime or container. The microapp must be tightly scoped and is

composed of UI, logic, and data components typically bound to back-end microservices through a mediated

API layer.

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon (cont’d)

Technology Priority Definitions

Build With Customers

Near-Term Horizon 
44 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon (cont’d)

Near-Term Horizon 

Long-Term Horizon 

Treat Data as a Strategic Asset

 Data and Analytics Services : Data and analytics services comprise activities around the data and analytics value

chain, which include data acquisition, data processing, storage, analytics, and data exposure. They may also

involve the use/provisioning of anonymized demographic or location data obtained from the communications

service providers’ (CSPs’) own subscriber bases. CSPs may also create niche analytics and offer data science or

consultancy services to their enterprise customers.

 Data and Analytics G overnance: An independent third party defines data and analytics governance as the

specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure appropriate behavior in the valuation,

creation, storage, access, analysis, consumption, retention, and disposal of all information assets. Data and

analytics governance includes the principles, guidelines, standards, policies, procedures, and links to outcomes

and metrics that ensure the effective and appropriate use of data and analytics in enabling an organization to

achieve its goals.

 Master Data Management: MDM is a technology-enabled business discipline in which business and IT work

together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, governance, semantic consistency, and accountability

of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers

and extended attributes that describes the core entities of an enterprise, such as existing customers,

prospective customers, citizens, suppliers, products, assets, sites, hierarchies, and the chart of accounts.

 Location Intelligence: Location intelligence is the process of deriving meaningful insight from geospatial data

relationships—people, places, or things—to solve particular challenges such as demographic analysis, movement

analysis, environmental analysis, and navigation. Location intelligence consists of a combination of GIS software,

web mapping solutions, position technologies such as GPS, and location-based data.

 Self-Service Data and Analytics: Self-service data and analytics refers to technology and processes that business

users use directly without involvement from IT departments. Established in areas such as modern business

intelligence and analytics tools, self-service data preparation, and data catalogs, self-service is moving into other

areas including MDM and database management.

 Augmented Analytics: Augmented analytics uses machine learning to automate data preparation, insight

discovery, data science, machine learning model development, and insight sharing for a broad range of business

users, operational workers, and citizen data scientists. It is expanding insights by using AI and ML techniques

to deliver analytics to everyone in the organization, with less time, skill, and interpretation bias than current

manual approaches.

 Synthetic Data: Synthetic data is a class of data that is artificially generated, i.e., not obtained from direct

measurements. Generation can use different methods such as statistically rigorous sampling from real data,

semantic approaches, or Generative Adversarial Networks, or by creating simulation scenarios where models

and processes interact to create completely new datasets of events.

 DataOps: DataOps is a collaborative data management practice focused on improving the communication,

integration, and automation of data flows between data managers and data consumers across an organization.

The goal of DataOps is to create predictable delivery and change management of data, data models, and related

artifacts. DataOps uses technology to orchestrate and automate data delivery with the appropriate levels of

security, quality, and metadata to improve the use and value of data in a dynamic environment.

Technology Priority Definitions
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 45

 Software-Defined Compute: Software-defined compute takes the concepts and abstraction of virtualization

and applies them across physical servers, hosts, and virtual machines. This can happen at many levels,

not just inclusive of hypervisors, but it requires an abstracted management and control plane from the

data plane.

 In-Memory Computing: In-memory computing (IMC) is an application architecture style which assumes that

all the data required by applications for processing are located in the main memory of their computing

platforms. In IMC-style applications, a persistent, nonvolatile data store (hard drives, solid state drives) is

used to permanently store in-memory data for recovery purposes, to manage overflow situations, to

manage the information lifecycle, and to transport data to other locations, but is not used as the primary

location for the application data.

 Edge Computing: Edge computing describes a distributed computing topology in which information

processing is placed close to the things or people that produce and/or consume that information. Drawing

from the concepts of mesh networking and distributed data centers, edge computing looks to keep traffic

and processing local and off the center of the network. The goals are to reduce latency and unnecessary

traffic and establish a hub for interconnection between interested peers and for the data thinning of

complex media types or computational loads.

 Video/Image Analytics: Video/image analytics for customer experience is the application of data science

methods to automate the identification of significant information contained in images, image streams, or

pixels in order to generate insight and actions that contextually improve the customer experience.

 Deep Neural Networks: Deep neural networks are large-scale neural networks, often with many processing

layers. They underpin most recent advances in AI by enabling computers to process much better complex

data, such as video, image, speech, and textual data.

Long-Term Horizon 

 Artificial Intelligence PaaS: Cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning platform services are known

collectively as AI cloud services. These solutions provide AI model building tools, APIs, and associated

middleware that enable the building/training, deployment, and consumption of machine learning models

running on prebuilt infrastructure as cloud services. These cover vision, voice, and general data

classification and prediction models of any type.

 Quantum Computing: Quantum computing is a type of nonclassical computing that operates on the

quantum state of subatomic particles. The particles represent information as elements denoted as

quantum bits (qubits). A qubit can represent all possible values simultaneously (superposition) until read.

Qubits can be linked with other qubits, a property known as entanglement. Quantum algorithms manipulate 

linked qubits in their undetermined, entangled state, a process that can address problems with vast 

combinatorial complexity.

 Augmented Intelligence: Augmented intelligence is a human-centered partnership model of people and AI

working together to enhance cognitive performance, including learning, decision-making, and new

experiences. Augmented intelligence is sometimes referred to as “centaur intelligence.” It is different from

augmented analytics: augmented intelligence is about people taking advantage of AI; augmented analytics

is about data and analytics technologies enhanced with AI.

Industry-Leading Practices on NGA’s Technology Horizon (cont’d)

Technology Priority Definitions

Bring AI, Cloud & HPC Into GEOINT Mainstream 

Near-Term Horizon 
46 | NGA Technology Strategy May 2020

 Setting a vision of where NGA will be from a technology perspective.

 Defining five grounding principles to achieve this vision.

 Creating an honest assessment and findings related to the current state, highlighting strengths and

opportunities for improvement.

 Determining the need for the five key initiatives for the way ahead.

Appendix B

About This Report

NGA’s Chief Technology Officer sponsored this strategy to set the Agency’s direction for mission-enabling 

technology of the future. The primary goal of this strategy is to “show the way” and empower builders and 

makers at the NGA. We got to this strategy by:

While the CTO sponsored this strategy, an independent third party facilitated its development.

The third-party advisor notably received outstanding support from mission representatives and executive

leaders across NGA to develop the findings and recommendations in this report. Inputs to this report include:

 Perspectives from stakeholders spanning the NGA enterprise. This included in-depth interviews with 40

mission and IT leaders throughout the Agency that provided insight, expertise, and context to create this

collective vision for the future.

 Visioning sessions with technology leaders within NGA.

 Reviews of 50+ strategic documents across NGA, the IC, and the DoD.

 Leading practices defined by an independent industry technology analyst.
May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 47

Appendix C

List of Acronyms

AI Artificial Intelligence

aPaaS Application Platform as a Service

API Application Program Interface

apimPaaS API Management PaaS

baPaaS business analytics PaaS

BRM Business Relationship Manager

CIO Chief Information Officer

COE Center of Excellence

COTS Commercial-Off-The-Shelf

CSP Communication Service Provider 

CTO Chief Technology Officer

DaaS Desktop as a Service

dbPaaS database PaaS

fPaaS function PaaS

HPC High-Performance Computing

I/O Input/Output

IMC In-Memory Computing

IoT PaaS Internet of Things PaaS

iPaaS Integration Platform as a Service

IPO Integrated Program Office

MDM Master Data Management 

ML Machine Learning

PaaS Platform as a Service

Qubits Quantum bits

ROI Return on Investment

SDK Software Development Kits

SME Subject Matter Expert

UX User Experience

VDI Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

XLA Experience Level Agreement
OCC 200505P001

Approved for public release, 20-512