There has been a growing discussion in the GEOINT community in recent years about crowdsourced information and what, if anything, should (could) be done with that information.  The discussion is both ongoing, evolving and at times, very robust within certain components of the GEOINT community led by NGA.  These discussions range from the dismissive hand-wringing of isolationism to an insatiable appetite to consume anything and everything as soon as it’s available irrespective of the who, what, when and where and why of the crowdsourced data.  Neither of these perspectives is a solid strategic objective, particularly when there is no single, agreed upon definition of crowdsourced data for GEOINT.

In fact, the term and has been co-opted and overrun by technology innovation (not necessarily derogatory) and the often misguided application of the concept and unbiased use of the term. However, there is a great deal of truth and integrity at the core and original meaning of the term crowdsourcing even as applied to today’s GEOINT needs.

To be clear, there is a place for traditional and evolving notions of crowdsourced data for GEOINT applications.  I think this is beyond argument at this point given that NGA and the GEOINT industry community are devoting considerable resources to understand, consume and make sense of the growing sources of crowdsourced data.  This has even spawned an entirely independent branch of geospatial data collection, commonly referred to as Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) or Participatory Geographic Information (PGI).  These have become well known by the ground-breaking platforms such as Open Street Map (OSM) Ushahidi, the USGS National Map, Flickr, Google and the NGA and GEOINT communities would be remiss if they did not acknowledge this shift in content creation available for analysis.  The conventional perspective that ‘crowdsourced data is unreliable and not credible’ or ‘not invented here’ must be put to rest and removed as an argument in consideration of crowdsourcing GEOINT data moving forward.  There is no place in the current mission for egos, corporate or individual, that sacrifice fitness for success for the status quo.

There is considerable value to crowdsourced GEOINT data and the critical work that needs to be done (and is being done) should be on making NGA more nimble and agile in evaluating and accommodating (or not) new sources or methods of incorporating crowdsourced data regardless of origination, across the enterprise matrix of resources at NGA in “real time” or as close as can be to real-time.  When we can move past the anxiety around a single piece of geospatial (that is crowdsourced) data not meeting all the requirements someone may have for one reason or another (not necessarily even a valid reason), the potential is really wide-open if we maintain singular focus on the mission and realize that no single piece of data is ever credible, authoritative or complete enough and to rely on any single data source [think Curveball] is potentially catastrophic.  Crowdsourced GEOINT is no different in that regard, with all the qualifications, caveats, metadata stacked on metadata, it’s time for crowdsourced GEOINT to take it’s place among the standard “go to” resources for NGA analysts and with the confidence and boldness that embraces the risk while managing the ambiguity and temporal uncertainty around any one piece of GEOINT.

When the mission requirements are clearly articulated, solutions are delivered. And when performance to the requirement is measured aggressively and consistently, crowdsourced GEOINT can be a powerful force-multiplier for NGA.  Let crowdsourced GEOINT fill the voids that would otherwise persist and raise the bar on more proprietary and exclusively non-crowdsourced resources to provide the exquisite and elegant GEOINT products that are expected of and delivered by NGA and the GEOINT industry community.