Overview[]
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)) is a Department of Defense combat support agency and a member of the national Intelligence Community (IC).
The NGA, as the functional manager for geospatial intelligence activities, is responsible for the development and evolution of the architecture for the National System for Geospatial Intelligence (NSG). As the functional manager for NSG, NGA actively communicates its architecture to members of the geospatial IC and promotes common standards and interoperability among NSG segments.
NGA is the IC's principal producer of and advisor for GEOINT. It prepares the geospatial data — ranging from maps and charts to sophisticated computerized databases — necessary for targeting in an era in which military operations are dependent upon precision-guided weapons.
NGA works with commercial imagery and geospatial data vendors to procure diverse, unclassified imagery and geospatial information to better support its customers. NGA provides an NGA support team in direct support of each combatant command’s joint intelligence operations center (JIOC).
The vision of NGA is to put the power of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) into its customers' hands:
- By providing online, on-demand access to its content, services, expertise, and support, along with the tools that allow users to serve themselves, and
- By broadening and deepening its analytic expertise, providing anticipatory analysis, and moving from a target-based model to an issue-driven, activity-based environment.
The goal of NGA is, according to the agency, to use imagery and other geospatial information "to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth."