NGA small sats conference explores data analytics and harnessing innovation

Industry and government leaders discussed how innovative approaches to data collection and analysis capabilities help strengthen the data used in answering intelligence questions during a U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation conference hosted by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at its headquarters in Springfield, VA on April 13.

“Sometimes you need people to come in from an entirely new direction to develop technologies and ideas,” said Anthony Vinci, NGA’s director of plans and programs, who gave the keynote address at the ‘Powering GEOINT Analytics: Big Data from Small Sats’ conference.

Vinci said partnerships help develop new products that were not previously available in the intelligence community.
“There is an entirely new class of data information that we can access to do our mission,” he said.
The conference was designed to explore how the government can and should use commercial GEOINT from small satellites as well as commercial analytic capabilities.

Several panels and speeches throughout the day addressed current capabilities and trends in technology as partnerships with industry and academia continue to foster new ideas in the approach to intelligence and big data.

“Do you embrace it? Or do you try to compete with it?” said Justin Poole, director of the NGA’s Source directorate, who spoke on a panel that addressed modern technology infrastructure for analysis. “Our choice is to embrace it.”

Source: NGA