Q&A: Lloyd Rowland
Geospatial Partner
Mapping the Terrain for the War on Terror
Lloyd Rowland
Deputy Director
National Geospatial-
Intelligence Agency
As deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Lloyd Rowland assists the director in formulating policy and managing agency activities in order to accomplish NGA’s mission.
Before his appointment as NGA deputy director in October 2006, Rowland served in numerous leadership positions throughout NGA, including business executive, deputy director of the Office of Business Transformation, director of global operations, associate deputy director of operations, director of geospatial information, deputy director of the Central Imagery Tasking Office and associate director of assessments. He was appointed to the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service in 1996.
During his 24 years in the Air Force, Rowland commanded a squadron in Operation Desert Storm and had various postings around the world. Most of his career involved reconnaissance force employment and imagery management. His awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross for combat operations, Presidential Meritorious Rank, Legion of Merit, Defense Superior Service Medal and the Air Medal.
Rowland has degrees from Memphis State University and the University of Southern California.
Rowland was interviewed by MGT Editor Harrison Donnelly.
Q: What are your responsibilities as deputy director of NGA?
A: I recently completed my first year, first as acting deputy director and then as deputy director. I spend my time leading, guiding and evaluating. Vice Admiral Murrett and I divide up the responsibilities into what we call portfolios. I focus on three specific areas of interest—the corporate issues, community interest, and industry and international agreements.
On the corporate side, I oversee areas such as finance, personnel management and organizational governance. Also, NGA has about 400 agreements with 119 countries around the world. We have an office that handles the details of these agreements, but in my portfolio as deputy director I oversee this area for the director.
On the community side, I spend a lot of my time in the policy arena that has to do with the workforce, such as new personnel policies and the new pay modernization in the intelligence community. I meet on a regular basis with the deputy directors from the other organizations in the intelligence community, where we review and recommend policy changes that have to do not only with substantive issues in the analysis area, but also human capital.
Getting ready for this interview, I looked at my schedule from the past few weeks to analyze how I spend my time. Last week, I spent a lot of time in community-type forums and activities. This week, the director and I are focusing on congressional relations. We have a hearing this afternoon, and we are also spending time with staffers from the various oversight committees. Last week, I also focused on leadership duties such as the budget evaluation. It’s that time of the year. While monitoring budget execution year-round, we are also currently building the program for FY 09-13. Most importantly, I was able to spend time with analysts at their workstations, understanding their issues and celebrating their successes.
Q: There have been many major changes in the intelligence community leadership of late. How is that affecting you?
A: From my perspective, it is going very well. Right now, the leadership lineup we have—Secretary of Defense Gates; Navy Vice Admiral McConnell [Ret.], the director of national intelligence; Air Force Lieutenant General Clapper [Ret.], the recently confirmed undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who is also a former director of NGA; Navy Vice Admiral Murrett, our director; Army Lieutenant General Alexander at the National Security Agency; Army Major General Maples at the Defense Intelligence Agency; and Dr. Donald Kerr at the National Reconnaissance Office—is probably the most dynamic leadership team this community has seen in a long time. That doesn’t mean that the leaders before have not done a good job, because they did; but what it means is that these leaders have been working together for years. They understand each other, and they know what improvements need to be made in the intelligence community.
If I had to summarize, I would say that we have great leaders who are going to do their best to do the right thing for the community and the nation. What we will see is that they will establish good policies that will improve certain areas such as analytical depth and collaboration and information-sharing throughout the community. They’re going to put in place the practices and procedures to do these things, and then write it all down so that those who come after will have a blueprint for continued success. I’m very optimistic that we’re going in the right direction with the right leadership team, and I am very proud to be part of the intelligence community at this particular place and time.
Q: What are some of NGA’s goals for the future?
A: I am glad you brought that up, because we have 12 focus areas at NGA. I’m going to talk about just a few of them. We started out thinking we would have maybe four to eight focus areas. But shortly after Vice Admiral Murrett arrived in June 2006, the senior leadership team at NGA sat down and examined the things that were going well now, and determined the issues that we wanted to focus on in the future. We came up with 12 goals, which we call our focus areas.
I have already talked about being the most collaborative partner in the intelligence community, and that is by and large our number-one goal—to be able to coordinate and collaborate not only within the agency, but also across other organizations in the intelligence community, in order to solve the tough intelligence questions facing both the community and the nation. When Director McConnell came in as the director of national intelligence [DNI], he laid out six focus areas, and one centers on collaboration and sharing information across the community. So we’re right in line with the DNI’s goal.
Another goal is to strengthen the quality of analysis. We need to continue hiring the right people, giving them the right tools, and making sure that they have the systems that they need to do the in-depth analysis across a broad mission and to share that information across the community.
Investing in our people will continue to be a top focus area. We are combining our campuses here in the East into a new facility down at Fort Belvoir, Va. We will be able to invest in the future and deploy our mission to the new campus, while looking for the best business practices. At the same time, we are not going to be moving for three or four years, so we need to make sure that our current operations, in terms of the facilities, tools, equipment and systems, provide a good working environment for our employees. So we will continue to invest in these areas. We have a third of our workforce in St. Louis, Mo., and two-thirds here, as well as between 900 and 1,000 people at any one time deployed around the world. We are currently operating from 154 different locations around the world. We will continue to invest in our workforce by providing the best facilities, top training and education and modern tools, regardless of location or mission set.
Strengthening governance and performance management is another goal. By that, we mean to make sure we are investing our resources the right way and getting the appropriate return on those resources—that we’re putting our analytical resources against the toughest targets, for example, and the ones that can best help the country in solving the intelligence challenges that we have. Underlying everything we do is to maintain the highest standards of personal and professional conduct as officers of the federal government, members of this organization, and professionals of the intelligence community.
Q: What are some of the things that NGA is doing to support the war on terror?
A: First of all, I want to brag a bit about the outstanding men and women we have at NGA. We have several thousand analysts and support personnel, and every day they come to work with a primary focus. We are all focused on the global war on terrorism. This is a long war against violent extremism, which will not end in the next 18 months or two years. So we have to be postured for the long fight, and make sure that we are involved in the right areas of analysis. Some of the things that we are doing include being able to locate, monitor and track the bad guys.
Geospatial intelligence is really the geospatial foundation for every intelligence discipline. Everyone has to be a particular place on the face of the Earth at a particular time. So it’s very important to be able to accurately pinpoint the natural and man-made features, as well as people. We are mapping the human terrain now in the war on terror, which is a new area for us and is very important to help our partners and customers.
Every man and woman in this organization is dedicated to supporting the U.S. national security objectives. The war on violent extremism is at the top of the long list.
Q: What are you doing to move more NGA products to the warfighter?
A: One of the things that we have done and continue to do is to forward-deploy NGA personnel. As I mentioned, we have NGA professionals in 154 locations around the world. We embed our geospatial professionals inside those partner footprints. This deployment strategy is very important, because we work directly with our partners and, therefore, better understand their needs. We help them define their requirements, and then our forward deployers reach back here to build and deliver to the partners exactly what they need. The key is to have our deployed professionals embedded in the partners’ footprints.
Q: What do you need from private industry in terms of technology?
A: The volume of information and data continues to grow by leaps and bounds. We need a way of taking that huge volume of data, to search for key information and to pull out the information needed. We should be able to discover the information, sort it and disseminate it very quickly. Bottom line: What we need from industry is the ability to rapidly collect information, store it, sort it, retrieve it and deliver it to the customer, depending on the need and requirement.
We also really need help on feature extraction. By that, I mean that if we look at a landscape with features such as rivers, bridges, towns, mountains, forest or desert area, we need to be able to quickly extract the feature data, attribute the features and store the information. For example, can forces navigate across a river, or do they have to build a bridge? If they’re going to build a mobile bridge, where would that be?
We need industry to help us manage the volume of information, build tools for data discovery, and extract information quickly and accurately. We are having some successes on that with industry now, so that as the volume of information increases over time, we will be better positioned to provide timely and accurate geospatial intelligence to our partners.
Q: How are you working to improve your relations with industry?
A: We have the Industry Interaction Panel, which provides a single focal point for industry partners to come into NGA, make their first point of contact, and make sure that their ideas are tracked through the organization. The panel is run by our business executive, who puts together a panel of seniors from throughout the organization to review white papers and unsolicited proposals. If a company comes in and says it has a good idea, they bring a white paper in, and the panel evaluates that. If the proposal requires further technical evaluation, the panel makes sure it gets to the right people at NGA to do the evaluation. Then the panel provides closed-loop feedback to industry on whether or not the unsolicited proposal satisfies an agency requirement.
In the last fiscal year, we had about 140 different submissions from industry through the Industry Interaction Panel. More than 80 percent of those were forwarded for further technical evaluation. Then we ended up awarding additional contracts to about 6 percent of those remaining. This year, we have received 59 submissions, of which 43 have been sent for further evaluation— about 73 percent. The panel is a very structured way for industry to offer good ideas, with a guarantee that the proposal will be properly evaluated and appropriate feedback will be given.
We also have general information sessions with industry partners about twice a year. We are continually looking for ways to improve our business, production and analytical processes. We count on industry to help us push the envelope—to provide new ways to provide the best geospatial intelligence possible.
Q: What is NGA’s role in homeland security?
A: We became more heavily involved in homeland security after 9/11. We are helping police officers, fire departments and other first responders deal with disasters and emergencies.
For example, I can still remember when Hurricane Katrina was going to become a Category 5 storm and was due to hit land within 36 hours. We decided to pre-position our mobile integrated imagery system down to the southern United States to be prepared, not knowing exactly where the storm was going to hit the coast. Within 24 hours, we had our ground station down there. We partnered with the FBI, Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] and other organizations when the disaster hit, and moved into the area after the storm had gone through with other federal organizations to help provide an operational situational view. We provided geospatial information and products to FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] in general and the other first responders there. Hurricane Rita came closely on the heels of that disaster, and we were embedded with the first responders to provide the most accurate and timely geospatial intelligence that we could. The other issues we are working with DHS are oriented toward border security and domestic counter-terrorism. We also work with DHS on humanmade disasters, such as forest fires.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing NGA?
A: I see four particular challenges. One is the global war on violent extremism, which is a long war that will continue to keep us at a very high operational tempo. We will continue to forward-deploy people where they are needed and to look at our resources back here to ensure that we are able to surge to one area or another to support the global war on terrorism. The first challenge is the long war—we’re postured for it, and we need to be sure that we take care of our people while in a high operational tempo.
A second challenge is to break down every barrier to collaboration, cooperation and information sharing, not only between the intelligence agencies but also other federal agencies. I will tell you, with this national and defense leadership team that we have in place, we have the right people to do that. It’s going to be a challenge for technological and policy reasons, and we will work together to be successful.
The third challenge is hiring the best and brightest. There is no shortage of fine people applying for government positions. We have many more applicants than we can hire. That’s the good news, but we continually monitor whether we have the right skills and people in the right places. The challenge is to bring people in and keep them.
One of the areas that we’ve been most successful with involves people in the military who are already planning to leave the military. We don’t urge people to leave the military, but if someone has already made that decision, we recruit them to bring in their experience.
The final challenge I would like to talk about is information sharing. We must move from the need-to-know to the responsibility-to-provide mindset. That’s a big focus area for the DNI and undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and I applaud that, because it makes information easier to move around. We are going to protect the sensitive information that we’ve been given to safeguard.
In every one of these challenges are also opportunities. The community and the country will be well served as we work together in a collaborative environment to solve tough intelligence issues. There are a lot of areas in which we cooperate very well with other intelligence agencies—where we combine the power of geospatial intelligence with other disciplines to create a very powerful medium. That’s the kind of cooperation that our leadership expects. We will succeed!
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: I want to say that it’s a privilege to be part of this organization, helping lead men and women who are passionate about the mission and dedicated to America’s national security. They are not only passionate about it, but are also a patriotic group of Americans that I’m proud to be part of. The leadership team that Vice Admiral Murrett has put together is one that I enjoy working with every day. ♦
