CBL-NGA_Technology_Strategy_APR_20-512.pdf

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

May 20204 | NGA Technology Strategy

FOREWORD & INTRODUCTION

May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 5

Foreword & Introduction

Letter from the Director

Treat Software and Data as Strategic Assets

People Partnerships Mission Today Mission TomorrowN G

A S tr at eg y

Te ch no lo gy

S tr at eg y

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

May 20206 | NGA Technology Strategy

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.

NNGGAA iiss aa ssooffttwwaarree aanndd ddaattaa eenntteerrpprriissee. 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.

SSooffttwwaarree aanndd ddaattaa aarree ssttrraatteeggiicc aasssseettss. 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.

WWee mmuusstt eemmppoowweerr tthhee bbuuiillddeerrss aanndd mmaakkeerrss ooff ggeeoossppaattiiaall tteecchhnnoollooggyy.. 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, user-centered 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

May 20208 | NGA Technology Strategy

TECHNOLOGY VISION

May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 9

Technology Vision

OO uu rr VV ii ss ii oo nn oo ff tt hh ee FF uu tt uu rr ee Flexible, responsive, user-centered technology—delivered at the speed of mission—to truly “show the way” for those who depend on us.

NGA’s technology future will pprrooppeell tthhee ccoonnttiinnuueedd ddoommiinnaannccee ooff GGEEOOIINNTT, protecting US interests and delivering strategic advantage.

In doing so, NGA will deliver a technology environment tthhaatt eemmppoowweerrss tthhee wwoorrkkffoorrccee aanndd mmiissssiioonn ccuussttoommeerrss in order to meet the needs of certain challenges and an uncertain future battlespace.

May 202010 | NGA Technology Strategy

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 long-term 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.

PP RR II NN CC II PP LL EE SS

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

May 202012 | NGA Technology Strategy

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 & ExecutionMission

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.

May 202014 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

May 202016 | NGA Technology Strategy

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 self-service 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 InitiativeToday

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.

NGA Technology Strategy | 17May 2020

THE WAY AHEAD

May 202018 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

AAggiilliittyy:: 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.

UUsseerr EExxppeerriieennccee: Many existing applications provide a single, bloated web application interface across personas and workflows, which limits user experience (UX) and productivity.

CCaappaabbiilliittiieess:: 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.

VVaalluuee ttoo NNGGAA

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

May 202020 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

C

IO

M an ag ed S el f-M an ag ed S el f-

M an ag ed

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 CI

O

M an ag ed

C

IO

-M an ag ed

Platform as a Service

Service Runtime

“Serverless” Infrastructure

Compute, Storage C lo ud

P ro vi de r- M an ag ed

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 Service- Centric Framework for New Applications

Enhance Governance and Related Processes for New and Existing Applications 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.

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.

May 202022 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

PPrroodduuccttiivviittyy:: The enterprise regularly experiences intermittent interruptions with productivity tools and services, leading to frustration and lost productivity.

TTeecchhnnoollooggyy RReeffrreesshh CCyycclleess:: 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.

CCoonnttrraacctt SSttrraatteeggyy CChhaalllleennggeess:: Existing legacy contracts are not aligned with performance incentives, which often leads to unclear expectations and a lack of accountability for service delivery.

PPeerrssoonnaalliizziinngg EExxppeerriieenncceess:: 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.

VVaalluuee ttoo NNGGAA

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

May 202024 | NGA Technology Strategy

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:

MMaappppiinngg tthhee eexxiissttiinngg ““uusseerr rroolleess”” ttoo eenndd--uusseerr ppeerrssoonnaass 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.

MMeettrriiccss aanndd iinncceennttiivveess ffoorr aacchhiieevviinngg tthhee ttrraannssffoorrmmeedd ddiiggiittaall eexxppeerriieennccee 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.

SSeellff--sseerrvviiccee iinnssttaallllaattiioonn ooff aapppprroovveedd,, ccoommmmoonn ssooffttwwaarree ppaacckkaaggeess 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.

EEssttaabblliisshhiinngg EExxppeerriieennccee--LLeevveell AAggrreeeemmeennttss ((XXLLAAss)) WWiitthh aa FFooccuuss oonn tthhee UUsseerr’’ss DDiiggiittaall EExxppeerriieennccee

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

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.

4 Reassess the Long- Term 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.

May 202026 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

CCaappaabbiilliittiieess:: 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.

SSppeenndd:: Limited product management results in ballooning sustainment costs for applications because of a lack of full lifecycle planning.

IInntteerrffaaccee BBeettwweeeenn TTeecchhnnoollooggyy aanndd CCuussttoommeerrss:: NGA has not developed consistent ways to engage and plan with customers when a new mission need is identified.

UUXX FFooccuuss:: 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 ManagementCI/CDDevSecOps

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.

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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

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.

VVaalluuee ttoo NNGGAA 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

IImmppaaccttffuull product management occurs at the nexus

Technology

NGA’s Mission

Customer Experience

May 202028 | NGA Technology Strategy

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 when product retiredWork stops at a fixed date

Change is embracedChange is avoided

Focus on featuresFocus on plan

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

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 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.

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.

Hire and Empower Product Managers, Designers, and User Experience Staff 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.

May 202030 | NGA Technology Strategy

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

SSiillooeedd DDaattaa:: 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.

RReeaall--TTiimmee CCoollllaabboorraattiioonn:: Basic sharing of data, files, products, and content can be challenging across directorates, with mission partners, and with customers.

CCrroossss--DDoommaaiinn FFeeaattuurreess:: Data and information reside across multiple security domains with limited features or functionality to enable discoverability and accessibility where customers need it most.

RRiisskk--AAvveerrssee PPoossttuurree:: 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 data-sharing 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, compliance-driven, risk-averse

Dynamic, 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 TomorrowMission TodayMission Yesterday

May 2020 NGA Technology Strategy | 31

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…