TerraGo Blog
NGA Director Aims to Put Power of GEOINT in Users’ Hands
Last week at the GEOINT 2010 Symposium, Letitia Long, the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), made a landmark announcement during her keynote address. She highlighted the NGA’s focus on “putting the power of GEOINT into users’ hands.”
Specifically, Long was talking about a fundamental shift in the agency to make GEOINT more accessible to users in the field. Here’s an excerpt from her presentation:
“I want to take what NGA has done for the user and put that power directly in their hands – on a mobile device or the means of their choosing. And I want to fundamentally change their online experience to one where they can interact with dynamic content and services themselves – if and when they want – through online, on-demand access to global seamless foundation, imagery, product, and activity layers.”
This is exactly the type of capability that we at TerraGo focus on enabling for the NGA, the U.S. Army Geospatial Center, and many other DoD and Intelligence Community customers. As our users know, TerraGo delivers software applications that leverage GeoPDF® to extend the access and application of maps and imagery for mobile field personnel. Through the use of TerraGo software and GeoPDF, mobile users who are not geospatial experts have the ability to easily access, capture and share GEOINT on a handheld device or laptop.
Long also discussed how the NGA is moving towards taking complex geo-processing capabilities of GIS and deliver to the user intuitive—but powerful—apps that perform the tasks that are needed. Building advanced geospatial applications that leverage GeoPDF is where much of TerraGo’s current work is focused. Our demonstrations at GEOINT highlighted these new capabilities to hundreds of government users.
The week of GEOINT was very exciting for TerraGo. We heard repeatedly from government users and our industry partners that GeoPDF is a key technology for delivering GEOINT and enabling collaboration in the field. We were very active demonstrating solutions that incorporated technology and data from Adobe, BAE Systems, DigitalGlobe, Esri, Hitachi, Intergraph, Northrop Grumman, Trimble and others.
To cap what was a special week for TerraGo at GEOINT 2010, CEO Rick Cobb and the TerraGo team had the very unique honor of providing an in-depth demonstration of our capabilities to Gen. James E. Cartwright, U.S. Marine Corps, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and keynote presenter. Stay tuned for some photos of General Cartwright at the TerraGo booth.
In the meantime, you can check out Long’s full GEOINT 2010 keynote video here.
