| | January 20159CIOReview2050 will be remarkably different than the world of 2015. Consider this sound bite: Today, history is being transcribed in messages of 140 characters or fewer almost 500 hundred million times a day, according to Twitter's web site. Clearly, no one accurately predicted the impact of the instant global obsession with social media. Tweets and images can turn local riots into national revolutions and global movements. The world's social fabric is changing in ways we do not yet understand.However, thanks to the explosion in smartphones, the internet and social media, we suddenly have available vast troves of geospatial data to help us better understand these complexities in our rapidly changing world. We are developing tools and methodologies, called activity-based intelligence or ABI, that allow us to manage the volume and velocity of Big Data so we can discover the networks and patterns of activities and thereby better understand these difficult situations. Our challenge is turn large data (imagery files) into big data (changes detected) for use by those analytic tools and methodologies. But the analytic tools and technologies we are developing, such as automated algorithms searching for patterns within data collected by sensors, mean little if analysts do not know how to evaluate all they receive in their multi-dimensional immersive environments. To enhance our workforce's ability to innovate and leverage technology, we are investing in what we call the "three E's" for each member of our workforce--education, experience and exposure. We have developed a strategic workforce plan and career management guides for each position in the agency from entry level to senior executive. We are also evolving our acquisition strategies to address technology evolution and the increasing transparency of our tradecraft.NGA's well-known and well-respected work in disaster recovery allows NGA to play a vital role in building the public's confidence in the intelligence community. Our successful, open, disaster response partnerships with FEMA and state and local first responders have led to a ground-breaking initiative in transparency and open sourcing. NGA has begun for the first time sharing code on GitHub, a popular code repository site open to all developers. So far, NGA has posted more than 15 projects there that enable open access to cutting-edge geospatial tools and there have been 95 downloads of our software. Our GitHub site opens a portal for any organization across industry, academia or government that wants to use these tools to create innovative disaster response applications.We continue to evolve our relationship with industry and academia as partners. We know that we can't keep up with the rapid pace of change in the commercial sector, and we want academia to continue to discover new GEOINT technologies and methodologies. We want the private sector and academia to work with our innovators and scientists to bring us their best ideas and help us learn how NGA can take advantage of them.We are just finishing a special pilot to accelerate our progress here--the GEOINT Solutions Marketplace (GSM). We post our basic needs right on our unclassified website. Then vendors, which include small businesses and non-traditional NGA contractors, see if there's something they already have on the shelf that can do the job--or do it with very minor changes. This allows us to use more of a "pay for use" model, instead of the traditional requirements definition-development-acquisition model. We don't need to own software that takes 18 months to develop, is based on rigid government specs and obsolete by the time it's delivered.We've truly been of consequence--making a real difference--in the last few years, in many areas:· Operation Neptune Spear--the hunt for Osama bin Laden· Hurricane Katrina· Libya 2011· The North Korea missile threat· The recent developments in the Levant, Iraq, Ukraine, Russia and Syria· Ebola support to West AfricaBy continuing to work harder and smarter to overcome the challenges we face and turn them into opportunities for even greater success, we will remain a dominant partner contributing to the defense of our nation.Our customers include policymakers, warfighters, other intelligence professionals and first responders
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