Overview[]
The National Center for Geospatial Intelligence Standards (NCGIS) was established as an entity within National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in 2002 in order to create a cohesive GEOINT Standards Program to carry out NGA’s functional management responsibilities for GEOINT. The mission of the NCGIS is to effectively manage GEOINT standards activities across the NSG community and within NGA itself by promoting the development, implementation and management of GEOINT and other related standards that enable optimum system and data interoperability. Where possible, the NCGIS fosters the development and use of community developed consensus-based standards to achieve these interoperability goals.
NCGIS responsibilities[]
Key responsibilities of the NCGIS include:
- Participation as subject matter experts, representing NSG interests in the standards development efforts of organizations such as ISO, DGIWG, American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and OGC® to ensure that GEOINT community requirements are incorporated into key interoperability standards and specifications, such as those for metadata, geospatial features/attributes, and web services.
- Leading and providing secretariat support for the Geospatial Intelligence Standards Working Group (GWG) and its subject related focus groups. The NCGIS, with GWG, leads standards development activities, such as for the GEOINT Structure Implementation profile (GSIP), which defines a common method for specifying and encoding GEOINT and related data.
- Leading and providing secretariat support for the NGA Architecture Standards Board (NASB) and the NASB Task Force.
- Interfacing with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on standards initiatives that support the Intelligence Community (IC).
- Advancing the implementation of GEOINT standards through the creation and support of ongoing standards initiatives, like the NGA Interoperability Action Team (NIAT), which is identifying the standards and metadata required to support GEOINT sensor systems capabilities.
- Promoting, in coordination with other NGA corporate entities, the development of additional standards profiles and reference implementations that are required in the NSG-wide systems development efforts of NGA.
- Conducting the NSG Standards Testing Program to develop and execute plans for conformance and interoperability testing of GEOINT standards. The NCGIS is working with the NSG community to establish a validation methodology that includes dissemination of test activity results. Standards compliance testing is a necessary step to achieving full systems and data interoperability.
The program direction for all NCGIS standards activities aligns with higher level standards and enterprise systems policies and strategic objectives that are defined and mandated across the DoD, IC, and U.S. government.