A new Mitre study has recommended four measures the U.S. government should take to help maintain the competitive edge of the country’s commercial geospatial intelligence industry and one of those is consolidating and sharing commercial GEOINT needs with the private sector.
The government should incrementally boost investments in commercial GEOINT to develop new capabilities and have open and clear communication with the industry to help the latter innovate around government missions, according to the study.
“Coupled with government capabilities, commercial GEOINT can provide the United States with significant technological, strategic, and economic advantages over other state and non-state competitors,” the study reads.
Mitre recommended that the U.S. government implement universal standards in support of commercial providers, reinforce the commercial first-policy and increase investment in analytics companies.
“The U.S. government should increase advertisement of analytic needs to industry and plan out a long-term operational acquisition for commercial analytics,” the report states. “This not only ensures mission applicability but also helps limit foreign influence on the GEOINT supply chain and use of analytic products in our global and connected world, providing stability to the market and U.S. government.”
Renee Dauerer, a senior geospatial computing engineer at Mitre, and Jenny Irvine, a principal systems engineer at the nonprofit organization, co-wrote the study with Mark Phillips, a senior adviser on commercial GEOINT, and Philip Tsang, a principal commercial GEOINT engineer at Mitre.
