September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 3

Table of Contents

Foreword and Introduction 4

Letter from the Director 5

Letter from the Chief Data Officer and Chief Data Scientist 6

Executive Summary 7

NGA Today and Tomorrow 10

Mission Today 11

Enabling Mission Tomorrow 12

Focus Areas 13

Key Goals 14

The Way Ahead 15

Goal 1: Manage Data as a Strategic Asset 16

Goal 2: Deliver Shared Data Services 20

Goal 3: Scale Data and Analytics Capabilities 24

Goal 4: Bolster Data Literacy in the Workforce 26

Notes: NGA Data Terminology 27

Letter from the Director

Our data supports our critical mission, fueling decision-making and mission 

advantage at all levels. From warfighters in the field to policymakers in 

Washington, our customers and our partners depend on NGA and NGA’s data 

to protect our nation’s security and to show the way. 

It is essential that we take all actions necessary to sustain our advantage 

in GEOINT—and that includes managing our data as a key strategic asset. With 

the holistic enterprise approach mapped out within this new Data Strategy, NGA 

sets forth a path for leading the way and staying ahead of our competitors.

To maintain advantage, we must deliver and analyze data at the speed of 

mission. We must pursue transformative strategies to modernize NGA’s data 

and analytics capabilities, inspire our people and accelerate delivery of data products and services. 

Like our Technology Strategy published in May 2020, this Data Strategy is directly tied to NGA’s overall 

strategic goals and mission imperatives. It recognizes that data is critical to driving future artificial 

intelligence and machine-learning initiatives and achieving mission requirements.

Only by leveraging our data as a strategic asset will we create and enable the next-generation GEOINT 

required for future success. We will succeed by instilling a coordinated and sustained focus on deliberate 

data governance and management within our organizational culture, making data more discoverable, 

accessible and reusable while simultaneously creating an entire workforce of committed and energized 

data stewards.

This is how we chart the course forward. This is how we win the race.

Robert D. Sharp

VADM, USN

Director 

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 5
Letter from the Chief Data Officer 

and Chief Data Scientist

NGA is a data organization. Yet the tremendous growth 

in data worldwide presents a significant challenge 

and opportunity for the agency as it creates and 

acquires data on a daily basis. Only when data is 

used strategically can it provide value in supporting 

our mission today and mission tomorrow. Data itself 

has little intrinsic value — what really matters to our 

customers are the actionable insights that can be 

gleaned from data.

The only way to stay ahead of our strategic competitors 

is if data is governed and applied in deliberate ways. This Data Strategy will guide us through a near-term 

transformation, so everyone, everywhere nurtures data as a strategic asset for insight, impact and integrity — to 

better deliver on our mandates and truly show the way.

Data should drive our business and mission decisions. We must accelerate a shift in our data and analytics 

abilities. The digital environment and modern data management are foundational to advanced analytics and 

automation. It is imperative that we create the means to improve how data drives better decision--making and leads 

to NGA-wide success.

Our goal is to be disruptors in the digital revolution. The race is on, and successful agencies and organizations are 

already using data and advanced analytics as competitive assets. Those that successfully harvest vast troves of data 

can improve productivity, make faster and more accurate decisions, reduce costs, increase competitive advantage over 

adversaries, discover new models and innovations and better engage customers, employees and partners.

We must become an agency with a high analytic IQ. As outlined in our companion strategy, the NGA Technology 

Strategy, which was published in May 2020, NGA must be capable of driving continuous improvement by our builders 

and makers in the workforce as a whole. We need to embrace adaptability and speed to quickly predict trends and 

discover new data insights. We need to best leverage data science — which we define as the art and craft of people 

leveraging technology to create value out of data — to deliver our GEOINT mission.

So why a Data Strategy, and why now? Today, data is our most powerful, non-depletable, durable strategic asset. As 

NGA’s Chief Data Officer and Chief Data Scientist, our shared goal is to provide a vision and a plan of what we as 

an agency want to do with our data and how we begin to support accessing, sharing and managing the content and 

analytics. The NGA Data Strategy will focus on making data easily discoverable and accessible, improve data reuse 

and create cross-domain efficiencies for next-generation GEOINT enablement. It is our humble attempt to influence 

our culture through continuously improving our critical, foundational data capabilities, mission models and digital 

tradecraft to better serve our customers and maintain our GEOINT supremacy.

Andrew L. Brooks

Chief Data Scientist 

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Deepak Kundal

Chief Data Officer 

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

6 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
Executive Summary

Data is NGA’s Strategic Asset

Along with the people who support NGA’s critical mission, NGA data is a key strategic asset that fuels 

decision support and mission advantage at all levels. From the forward-deployed warfighter to NGA staff to 

the strategic-level policymakers who require it, data must be delivered and analyzed at the speed of mission 

to gain decision advantage over our adversaries. NGA’s digital modernization relies on enterprise data 

management policies, standards and practices to guide us through our transformation. Improving workforce 

skills in the data fields necessary for effective data management will determine our future success.

This Data Strategy links NGA’s Mission Imperatives with existing NGA guidance. It defines the actions that 

NGA will take to implement the Department of Defense (DOD) Data Strategy and IC strategies to streamline 

focus and inspire the workforce to support key goals required to modernize NGA’s data and analytics 

capabilities. NGA must deliberately and carefully manage its data over time to enable the outcomes 

described in this strategy to accelerate delivery of data products and services to all of NGA’s customers. 

Those customers include internal analysts, DOD, IC, National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG), Allied 

System for Geospatial Intelligence (ASG), and other international partners.

Focus Areas

To close the gap between NGA’s current capabilities and lay the foundation to deliver 

mission tomorrow, the NGA Data Strategy establishes the following focus areas.

NGA Vision 

for Data

NGA will create, manage and securely share 

trusted data with the speed, accuracy and 

precision that our customers’ missions demand.

Easily 

Discoverable and 

Accessible Data

Cross-Domain 

Efficiencies

Improved Data 

Reuse and 

Integration

Next-Generation 

GEOINT

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 7
Key Goals to Support NGA’s Mission 

and Workforce

To achieve the desired results, we will pursue four key 

goals to meet our mission and business needs to support 

decision-making at all levels. These key goals will enable 

a deliberate and coordinated approach to managing and 

curating data.

Manage Data as a Strategic 

Asset

Deliver Shared Data 

Services

Scale Data and Analytics 

Capabilities

Bolster Data Literacy 

in the Workforce

8 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
NGA Vision for Data

Treating data* as a strategic asset is a major component of enabling NGA’s mission to 

provide GEOINT to customers. Members of NGA’s workforce, spanning mission leadership, 

builders and makers, and the workforce at large, must be energized stewards of this data 

strategy in order to deliver a sustained GEOINT advantage to NGA’s customers.

* See Notes on page 27 for NGA data definitions.

To achieve NGA’s vision for data, the enterprise will pursue the following principles to 

achieve the goals and objectives within its Data Strategy.

Our Vision to Guide Mission Tomorrow

NGA will create, manage and securely share trusted data with the 

speed, accuracy and precision that our customers’ missions demand.

Accelerated

	We can rapidly take action 

and make decisions.

	We can deliver GEOINT 

with speed, accuracy and 

precision.

	We can enable the workforce 

to pivot quickly and work at 

the speed of mission.

Trusted

	Our data is secure and 

resilient.

	We know the source and 

lineage of the data.

	We have transparency and 

visibility of data to support 

both mission and business 

needs.

	We understand the risk to 

our data.

Shared

	It is our data, not my data.

	Data is a strategic asset.

	NGA data is accessible 

and discoverable for both 

mission and business.

	There are pathways to 

access data across the 

enterprise.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 9

Mission Today

NGA has a long history of critical 

partnerships across the DOD, IC, 

commercial industry and international 

partners to support key missions through 

data and intelligence analysis. As the 

amount and variety of data continue 

to increase, NGA has implemented 

initiatives such as the Artificial Intelligence, 

Automation and Augmentation (AAA) crossfunctional team and entities such as Data 

Corps to focus on delivering data-informed 

analysis to NGA and its mission partners. 

Similarly, NGA directorates have started 

to explore and adopt tradecraft practices 

to implement data-informed processes to 

augment decision-making capabilities.

NGA must leverage data as a strategic 

asset to continually improve the GEOINT 

products it creates and provides to 

customers. NGA’s data is critical to support 

future AI and machine-learning (ML) 

initiatives and will be the fuel to launch 

NGA’s Moonshot effort, which is the agency’s operational framework that prioritizes 

innovation and competing successfully.

Data is the lifeblood of generating the key insights required to give decision-makers at all 

levels the knowledge to attain strategic advantage.

While NGA has ambitious plans in progress to transform how internal and external 

customers consume data to support mission priorities, there must be a coordinated and 

sustained focus on executing this Data Strategy’s key tenets. The four goals at the heart 

of the Data Strategy are based on the focus areas and challenges voiced by mission and 

technology stakeholders across over 25 NGA offices.

Data and analytics initiatives provide the 

foundational support for NGA’s strategic 

guidance and are the fuel for the NGA 

Moonshot.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 11
Enabling Mission Tomorrow

To enable mission tomorrow from where we are today, our vision principles, focus areas 

and key goals will be our guide to establish the priorities to address current capability 

gaps and lay the foundations for the delivery of forward-leaning data and analytics 

tradecraft and techniques in the future.

This is how we ensure data becomes a ubiquitous asset for the GEOINT enterprise. A first 

step to this culture shift is to acknowledge and internalize that the term “NGA data” means 

all data, including raw data and NGA-created data, and regardless of source, it must be 

viewed as a strategic asset and accessible to all those we support.

This strategy represents our near- and mid-term goals for the agency’s data and analytics 

efforts. This Data Strategy must not be a static document. It is meant to inform 

resources and funding decisions in the coming years. We will update this strategy as we 

achieve our mission goals and grow our capabilities to meet the challenges of tomorrow. FOCUS GOALS

Easily 

Discoverable and 

Accessible Data

Improved 

Data Reuse 

and Integration

Cross-Domain 

Efficiencies

Next-Generation 

GEOINT

Manage Data as a 

Strategic Asset

Goal 1:

Goal 2:

Goal 3:

Goal 4:

Deliver Shared 

Data Services

Scale Data and 

Analytics 

Capabilities

Bolster 

Data Literacy 

in the Workforce

Accelerated 

Trusted

Shared

12 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
The four focus areas below represent the voice of NGA stakeholders 

from across the agency. These focus areas will guide our investments 

in people and technologies to advance data-informed decision-making 

at the speed of mission.

Focus Areas

NGA’s data can be intuitively discovered, 

easily accessed and responsibly shared 

with those who need it.

Easily 

Discoverable and 

Accessible Data

NGA data assets can be easily 

reused for anticipated 

and unanticipated purposes.

Improved Data 

Reuse and 

Integration

NGA’s customers and workforce can 

efficiently find data across security domains to 

perform impactful data and analytics activities.

Cross-Domain 

Efficiencies

GEOINT production is aided by AI/ML to 

enhance production capacity and the mission 

impact of GEOINT products.

Next-Generation 

GEOINT

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 13
Key Goals

We will aggressively pursue four key goals to provide capabilities to our stakeholders to 

deliver on our Data Strategy. The next section provides an overview of each goal as well 

as the objectives and initiatives necessary to achieve it. 

Mission

Today

Examples of what we 

experience today ...

Analysts, program managers 

and data professionals are 

not always aware of 

valuable data that already exists 

and/or may not gain timely access 

to that data.

While pockets of data knowledge 

and literacy have grown throughout 

NGA in recent years, the 

efforts have been fragmented 

and not fully integrated.

Business and mission stakeholders 

are challenged to bring together 

disparate data from across the 

enterprise and reuse this data to 

improve mission outcomes.

Data and analytics initiatives exist 

within the mission ofces but 

do not necessarily scale this 

success and these capabilities 

across the enterprise.

Mission

Tomorrow

To enable our 

future mission ...

NGA users can visualize and tap 

into the full NGA data 

ecosystem to seamlessly gain 

insights and support 

decision-making at all levels.

NGA adopts an enterprise 

approach to building data

culture and advances a 

coordinated data literacy 

program across the workforce.

Improved governance procedures 

and controls enable NGA’s 

workforce to easily and securely 

nd data in standardized formats 

internally and share products with 

customers and partners, wherever 

and whenever they need them.

NGA’s approach to 

transformational data and 

analytics capabilities is 

coordinated and streamlined, 

accelerating the identication, 

acquisition and adoption 

of advanced GEOINT capabilities.

The capabilities we 

will provide ...

Goal 4:

Bolster Data 

Literacy in the 

Workforce

Goal 2:

Deliver Shared 

Data Services

Goal 1:

Manage Data as 

a Strategic Asset

Goal 3: 

Scale Data 

and Analytics 

Capabilities

Key

Goals

14 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021

Challenges

Gaps in Execution of Data Governance 

and Management: Enterprise data 

governance is a recognized gap at NGA, 

but there is uncertainty as to the extent 

to which decisions should be centralized.

Data Standards Inconsistency: Data 

and metadata standards are highly 

customized and inconsistent across 

NGA’s mission and within business 

units, and data stewards are not always 

empowered to enforce standards at the 

right levels.

Limited Cross-Domain Data Discovery 

and Availability: Moving between 

domains to access datasets could limit 

rapid response to mission needs.

Objectives and Initiatives

To manage data as a strategic asset and to develop 

a more adaptive and consistent approach to data 

governance, NGA must:

Commit to improving data centricity

• Operationalize the federated governance framework for making 

data-related decisions.

• Deploy an enterprise cross-domain data inventory and catalog 

with classification, tagging and lifecycle management.

• Coordinate the development of consistent enterprise data 

standards and taxonomies through the DOD and IC Joint 

Enterprise Standards Baseline.

Commit to improving data security

• Publish clear and unambiguous policies and processes for the 

management and security of NGA’s data assets.

Adopt consistent approaches to data governance and management

• Enable data policy and standards development.

• Operationalize a data stewardship program to promote data 

quality and adherence to policies and standards.

• Communicate and optimize governance initiatives.

GOAL 1: Manage Data as a Strategic Asset

NGA will deploy a data governance framework to ensure we proactively, strategically and 

consistently manage data while enabling agility, flexibility and innovation.

Shifting NGA’s culture to a common goal of an adaptive governance 

that focuses on outcomes, not control, is essential to support the 

execution of the Data Strategy.

Overview

Our flexible, adaptive 

governance framework will 

provide the autonomy and 

flexibility to mission areas 

to enable decision-making 

at the speed of mission. 

Our adaptive governance 

framework will include the 

acceleration of the data 

stewardship program to 

support rapid, transparent 

decision-making.

16 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
How We Will Operate

Managing data as a strategic asset 

must build on the existing governance 

efforts such as Enterprise Data 

Management to ensure the right people 

are able to leverage our data and 

analytics assets to inform decisions at 

the right time to deliver mission results. 

The goal is to provide the proper 

foundational governance framework to 

enable “just enough” data governance 

by shifting away from control-based 

processes and adopt a collaborative 

and automated (where possible) 

approach to data governance. 

A Closer Look

NGA’s proposed federated governance 

framework will provide the agency 

a more transparent approach to 

decentralized versus centralized 

decision-making. The aim of this 

approach is to allow mission units 

the ability to establish policies and 

standards under a single, overarching 

strategic guidance.

The Data Governance Steering 

Committee will set the high-level 

direction for governance activities, in 

accordance with NSG policies and 

direction, with the Data Governance 

Council providing more operational-level 

guidance to streamline execution of 

governance activities at the lower KC 

and domain governance levels. The 

KC Data Governance bodies will make 

governance recommendations to the 

Data Governance Council and escalate 

policy and standards recommendations 

when required. The Domain Data 

Governance bodies are the key 

entities that enable and enforce data 

governance decisions and policies.

We will follow best practice foundational 

principles to deploy our governance framework.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 17
Data Governance and AI/ML Initiatives

Effectively managing data as a strategic asset at the enterprise level is a critical foundational capability 

to support NGA’s continued journey to advancing AI capabilities and competencies. Adaptive, flexible data 

governance is a key component of enabling data discoverability and integration to support AI and ML algorithms 

to advance NGA’s GEOINT mission.

The Data Governance Steering Committee will lead the efforts to streamline and communicate the key policies and 

standards to support data sharing, reuse and integration across NGA. These policies and standards include:

 Data registration and sharin

 Data acces

 Data tagging and classificatio

 Data quality and metadata standard

 Data security policy (in coordination with

the Chief Information Security Officer)

Consistent data tagging and classification policies and standards are critical to support data discoverability across 

security domains. The long-term goal of NGA’s data catalog is for a cross-domain functionality to support greater 

cross-domain efficiencies.

Empowering the data stewards to enforce data policies and standards consistently is a priority for this initiative. The 

data stewardship program must mature to provide consistent training and oversight to enable the data stewards to 

support NGA’s data governance program. The data stewards are the first line of defense for data quality and must 

be properly trained and equipped with the tools to automate processes and workflow tools to remove as many 

human biases as possible and promote transparency in decision-making processes.

Data is at the heart of all AI/ML initiatives. 

This Data Strategy reinforces AAA efforts 

such as algorithm governance to ensure 

NGA has a consistent approach to building, 

managing, maintaining and deploying its 

models for the enterprise.

Supporting NGA’s mission AI use cases, 

including ML, computer vision and natural 

language processing techniques, is a 

key priority for this Data Strategy. Data 

governance efforts will support better 

AI outcomes by improving the sources 

of data used for training. Further, data 

governance will help curate a knowledge 

base about data sources — both internal 

and external — including known potential 

features and bias.

18 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
Implementation Steps

1 Launch the Data Governance Steering Committee

 Obtain approval for the NGA Data Governance Framework

 Execute communications to socialize governance framework and benefits

 Recruit Steering Committee members

 Draft and publish the Data Governance Steering Committee Charter

 Conduct the Steering Committee kickoff and follow-on quarterly meetings for data investments

2 Launch the Data Governance Council

 Develop and approve the data stewardship deployment strategy

 Define stewardship roles, responsibilities, critical handoffs and relationships

 Draft and publish the Data Governance Council charter and principles

 Finalize the federated decision framework and set the direction for KC and domain

governance deployment.

3 Enable Data Policy and Standards Development

 Deploy data standards and data policy working groups to conduct a gap analysis and develop

prioritized data standards and policies.

 Define and deploy the escalation and issue resolution process

 Launch ongoing standards recommendation, vetting and approval pilot processes

 Broadly communicate governance standards, policies and enforcement roles

4 Operationalize the Data Stewardship Program

 Execute stewardship training

 Scope and execute a data stewardship pilot and capture lessons learned and best practices,

including Data Corps and joint content manager best practices.

 Formally launch data steward quality management and governance execution at scale

 Identify opportunities to automate governance execution

5 Communicate and Optimize Governance Initiatives

 Measure and communicate benefits and impacts of data governance on data strategy and NGA

mission objectives.

 Adjust/optimize data governance framework and practices based on performance results and

lessons learned.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 19
Objectives and Initiatives

To deliver data as a shared service and streamline 

the ability to access data, NGA must:

Break down cultural and architectural barriers to data 

discoverability and access

• Develop a cohesive, integrated, modern data architecture for 

the agency.

• Develop digital models of data systems and services.

• Deploy intuitive interfaces that enable users to easily explore 

and access data.

Make data discoverable across domains

• Build data pipelines that successfully deliver data from 

sources to consumers.

• Deploy processes that enable data services orchestration 

(e.g., request intake, demand management).

Challenges

“My data” versus “NGA data”: NGA is 

in the early stages of adopting a culture 

that views data as a strategic, shared 

asset. This is due to the historically 

siloed nature of the organization and 

comfort with existing processes.

Data Reuse and Integration: NGA 

data is often not available or prepared 

for reuse/integration.

Data Discovery, Access and 

Usability: Members of the workforce 

can experience difficulty finding and 

accessing data and transforming the 

data into a usable format that supports 

their analytic requirements.

Overview

NGA will enable data sharing and access through 

services that deliver data (both consumed and created) 

directly to customers in an efficient and intuitive way. 

We will modernize our data and analytics processes, 

technologies and architectures to support this goal. 

Through the execution of this goal, members of the 

workforce will be able to visualize and utilize the data to 

which they should have access.

The delivery of these services will reduce time spent 

searching for and conditioning data and increase the 

time spent generating insight and decision support for 

mission. These services also will set the foundations 

to deliver AI capabilities to the agency and support 

integration into larger IC initiatives. 

GOAL 2: Deliver Shared Data Services

NGA will deploy shared data services that break down data silos and enable members of NGA’s 

workforce to directly and intuitively discover and access the data they need.

The delivery of mission impacts is critical to how we design a data architecture 

that supports the analytic process.

20 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
How We Will Operate

Finding, cleaning, transforming and sharing 

data in a trusted and timely manner to meet 

the mission and business needs of NGA’s 

multiple internal and external stakeholder 

groups is a current and pervasive pain 

point across the agency. There are multiple 

mission requirements, stakeholders and 

outcomes that NGA’s data must enable 

through a modern data architecture. To 

best meet our customers’ missions and 

further enhance our business, industry 

and academic partnerships, deploying this 

modern data architecture will require a 

new approach to governance, processes, 

practices and workforce development to 

support these changes. We must begin 

to identify opportunities to procure and 

develop capabilities to support this 

data architecture. 

A Closer Look

Delivering data to NGA’s stakeholders will require a measured approach to self-service delivery of data and analytics 

products, including data as a service. Understanding the key requirements based on mission and business needs is a 

critical requirement for designing this architecture. Similar to the developer portal for application programming interfaces 

(APIs) discussed in the NGA Technology Strategy, new data interfaces will be critical to improve data access.

We must find innovative ways to provide the workforce with insights into the data that exists and then design seamless 

and automated (where possible) interfaces to allow users data access while adhering to security policies and removing 

human biases in the request process.

NGA’s data and analytics builders and makers — data architects, system architects, data engineers, developers, system 

engineers, business and mission analysts and data storage administrators — must work closer than ever to understand the 

customer requirements and translate those requirements into the delivery of repeatable data and analytics products. We will 

develop consistent processes to identify, prioritize and execute the customer requirements to enable mission, leveraging 

existing processes and infrastructure where possible.

We also must adopt modern, adaptive governance 

and design processes. Data registration and sharing 

policies, access and tagging standards as well 

as data quality standards must be consistent and 

automated when feasible.

Modern design practices such as DataOps will 

support the development and deployment of our 

data products. DataOps focuses on improving 

communication, integration and automation of data 

flows between data engineers, data architects, etc., 

and the many data consumers across the agency. 

The goal of DataOps is to reduce the cycle time of 

integrated data delivery between data managers 

and consumers.

Add new data to the data sandbox. 

Promote and validate analytics content. 

Enforce data rules in the organization.

Duplicate and then modify live

production content. 

Nominate content to promote pilots.

Consume and interact with

production content.

Experts

• Data Scientists

• Data Engineers

• Analytics Stewards

• Analytics Champions

Access and use curated, 

approved data sources.

Nominate content to be promoted 

to production.

Enforce data governance in the 

specic mission or business unit.

Innovators

• Power Users

• Analytics Savvy

• Business Users

• Citizen Data Scientists

Explorers

• Power Users

• Junior Analysts

• Managers

Consumers

• Mission Analysts

• NGA Business Customers

• External Customers

DataOps, like DevOps, focuses 

on continuous delivery.

Our modern data architecture must account for multiple 

data users – consumers, explorers, innovators and experts.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 21
Our approach to data architecture must not be repository-driven, but capability-driven to support mission outcomes. 

Maturing our architecture capabilities must focus on balancing the technologies to connect people to data 

through infrastructure versus virtualization designs. We will begin to identify opportunities to procure and develop 

capabilities — such as an augmented cross-domain data catalog, a data fabric, APIs and data virtualization — to 

support this modern data architecture.

Supporting NGA data services will require tight coordination among core data and analytics roles and skill sets – balancing 

their respective areas of expertise — to accelerate delivery of advanced analytics data science and AI/ML current and future 

ambitions. The ultimate goal should be to centralize these roles where possible for streamlined delivery.

Data management competencies and roles recommended in this key goal are foundational for agency-wide pursuits in 

AI/ML and advanced analytics. These roles share responsibility with data science and mission/business stakeholders to 

build products and services collaboratively and yield the full value of NGA data.

Data management and data science teams must balance expertise with 

mission/business understanding to yield successful AI teams that produce 

agency value and mission success.

Design of our data architecture must 

balance collect vs. connect.

22 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
Implementation Steps

1 Establish the Shared Data Service Foundations

 Document NGA tools across data ingest, storage and consumption to identify existing, overlapping

and/or missing capabilities.

 Assess existing tools for their ability to collect and share metadata (such as data catalogs, data

integration, data virtualization, semantic technology).

 Establish processes such as request intake and demand management

 Conduct strategic communications and marketing

 Deploy architecture (iterative step)

2 Conduct a Data Services Pilot

 Determine viable, prioritized datasets to be first movers into the modernized data architecture

 Deploy targeted architectures to support the pilot

 Capture and communicate lessons learned for scaling

3 Enable Data Discovery Through a Data Catalog

 Collect functional requirements for building an enterprise data catalog

 Deploy the enterprise cross-domain data catalog

 Capture and apply lessons learned from the data catalog process

4 Develop Processes and Pipelines to Deliver Data to Customers

 Refine request and requirements processes

 Configure pipelines based on requirements and usage

 Deliver data to customers

 Monitor and communicate performance and results

5 Coordinate Across Data, Application and Engineering Teams to Accelerate 

Data Sharing Via APIs

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

with other systems.

 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.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 23
Objectives and Initiatives

To transform the way data and analytics capabilities 

are pursued and scaled, NGA must:

Coordinate scaling of best-of-breed data and analytics 

initiative across the enterprise

• Coordinate and scale viable data and analytics pilot projects to 

build cohesion among NGA’s data, analytics, data science and 

related research initiatives.

Challenge

Siloed Data and Analytics Initiative 

efforts: Data and analytics initiatives 

often exist in silos across NGA. There 

needs to be more communication and 

coordination to identify and scale bestof-breed initiatives to the enterprise.

Overview

We will deploy a coordinating framework 

that links key data and analytics (D&A)

stakeholders across NGA to foster 

collaboration among the multiple data 

and analytics groups and promote a 

culture of sharing. We will champion the 

data and analytics initiatives that will 

transform how NGA operates.

How We Will Operate

NGA’s Data Governance Steering Committee, with the support of the CDO, will lead the coordination of data and analytics 

initiatives across the agency, to identify and prioritize opportunities to scale pilots to production. The steering committee 

will track these data and analytics initiatives and support the identification of dependencies, disconnects and gaps 

among initiatives to foster more collaboration across NGA.

GOAL 3: Scale Data and Analytics Capabilities

NGA will coordinate and scale best-of-breed data and analytics initiatives across the enterprise in 

order to accelerate the identification, acquisition and adoption of advanced GEOINT capabilities.

Key stakeholder groups will provide inputs for scaling data

 and analytics initiatives to the enterprise.

24 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
A Closer Look

NGA will ensure its workforce is trained and 

equipped to take advantage of and apply 

transformational data and analytics capabilities 

that will be critical to this effort. 

The CDO, Chief Data Scientist, AAA and 

Data Corps as well as the Chief Information 

Officer and Information Technology Services, 

Research, Analysis and Source directorates 

will be the key members to initially collaborate 

in support of the Agency’s data and analytics 

initiative coordination efforts, and others will 

be identified in the future. Managing data- and 

analytics-related activities as a portfolio will 

be the primary near-term objective of this 

committee. NGA will identify and empower a 

portfolio manager to track, monitor and report 

the progress of these initiatives.

Implementation Steps

1 Develop the Data and Analytics Center of Excellence

 Identify, assign and empower Integrated Program Offices (IPOs)

 Determine the process to support idea generation and prioritization

 Define a process to assemble, define and document the current portfolio of data and analytics

projects, initiatives and efforts.

 Determine a process for conducting risk and opportunity analyses

 Establish a shared vision for next-generation GEOINT, and develop plans to support this vision

2 Communicate Data and Analytics Initiative Progress

 Define key reporting metrics

 Establish a regular cadence for reporting updates to the steering committee portfolio to NGA

leadership and the workforce.

 Establish and communicate a process for monitoring data and analytics activities and developing

plans to get there.

3 Deliver Advanced Analytics, AI and Machine-Learning Strategy

 Identify key stakeholder groups, including within the agency, the NSG and ASG as well as the other

international partners.

 Develop actionable plans for delivering data capabilities that enable the mission imperatives

 Create implementation plan

 Define key implementation and adoption metrics

The Data Governance Steering Committee will provide 

consistency to support and scale best-of-breed data 

and analytics initiatives.

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 25
Objectives and Initiatives

To develop a coordinated, enterprise approach to 

building a data culture and increasing the workforce’s 

data acumen, NGA must:

Bolster and advance NGA’s data literacy program

• Establish proper priorities and baselines as well as training 

and education pipelines.

• Design and deploy tailored learning paths to support the 

growth of NGA’s workforce as a whole.

Challenges

Skills and talent shortfalls: NGA is in 

the early stages of addressing the data 

literacy needs across the workforce. 

There are multiple data literacy efforts 

(formal and informal) that exist across 

the agency. These silos of data literacy 

excellence need to be bolstered, 

shared and coordinated across the 

enterprise as next steps in maturing 

NGA’s data literacy.

Overview

We will build workforce skills and the data literacy program to provide an enterprise, coordinated approach to improving 

NGA’s collective level of data literacy and capability through training, education, exposure and experience opportunities. 

How We Will Operate

Data acumen/data literacy is a core capability of a truly digital society. The ability to read, write and communicate data 

in NGA’s mission and business contexts is a foundational capability to enable NGA’s mission tomorrow. Effectively 

increasing data literacy in organizations must be a coordinated effort to establish the proper priorities and baselines as 

well as training and education pipelines.

A Closer Look

The Human Development (HD) directorate (specifically 

Career Services) and the CDO will be key partners in 

this data literacy effort with support from the directorate 

training and tradecraft offices. Coordinating NGA’s data 

literacy program through an identified enterprise data 

literacy lead who works with both the CDO and HD to 

develop a data literacy training curriculum and roadmap 

will be critical to our shared data literacy success. We 

will design and deploy tailored learning paths to support 

the growth of NGA’s workforce as a whole to improve our 

overall level of data literacy.

GOAL 4: Bolster Data Literacy in the Workforce

NGA will promote a data culture by bolstering the agency’s data literacy program to drive 

consistency in data governance and data management and enhance our preparedness for the 

 mission today and the mission tomorrow.

Key pillars to build enterprise data literacy

26 | NGA Data Strategy September 2021
Implementation Steps

1 Refine and Accelerate the NGA Data Literacy Program

 Conduct an enterprise data literacy assessment

 Develop the data literacy curriculum and roadmap with HDT and respective directorate’s training

and tradecraft offices.

 Determine technology platform requirements to support the data literacy curriculum

 Deploy the data literacy curriculum and learning path management with the NGA College and HD

2 Craft Advanced Data Literacy Roadmap

 Identify needed advanced data literacy skills and opportunities, such as AI, machine learning

and computer vision.

 Implement technical mentorship program

 Bolster support for grassroots community-based skills and knowledge exchange activities

NGA GEOINT and Corporate Mission Data

• NGA GEOINT Mission Data: This is content related to supporting NGA’s GEOINT mission. This data 

may be statistical data and information derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and 

surveying technologies as well as mapping, charting, geodetic data, and related products, including data 

that informs multiple intelligence and DOD programs.

• Corporate Data: This is content related to NGA’s corporate function to plan and operate programs and 

initiatives across the agency. This data includes acquisition, engineering, contracting and financial data 

and data that is used to track business progress such as calculated metrics and forecasts. This data also 

includes personnel data of NGA employees and contractors as well as the HR management systems. 

*NGA will continue to ensure that all NGA data is handled in a manner that protects the privacy and civil liberties of 

 U.S. Persons in accordance with the Constitution and all applicable laws and policies.

Notes: NGA Data Terminology

The NGA Data Strategy is a guide for all of NGA’s data* 

that supports NGA’s GEOINT and corporate missions, sources and structures. 

September 2021 NGA Data Strategy | 27
OCC 210205-006

Approved for public release, 21-873