ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 11, 2014-- Members of the U.S. Army Geospatial-Enterprise Governance Board convened Monday at the Pentagon for their initial meeting of fiscal year 2015 to review the latest efforts being undertaken to tackle geospatial interoperability and the development of a network enabled geospatial enterprise despite growing fiscal challenges and reductions in the force structure.

Board co-chairs, Lt. Gen. Mary A. Legere, deputy chief of staff, G2 and Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, chief of engineers, et al, received an update on the analysis underway on Army program of record systems and their geospatial compatibility.

"One of the Army's top warfighting challenges is to create common situational understanding...realized by a capability to collect, generate, fuse and disseminate high-resolution, standard and shareable geospatial data across the network," said Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella, Army geospatial information officer and director for the Army Geospatial Center. "The efforts of this board have put us much closer to the actualization of an Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE)," added Fontanella, who oversees the operational and administrative management of the geospatial governance process.

The semi-annual meeting was chartered to assess and resolve issues that could hinder the development of the AGE, which will allow for horizontal and vertical interoperability, sharing of geospatial information from national to tactical, and nests within the Common Operation Environment (COE).

Dan Visone, directorate chief for the Army Geospatial Center's Systems and Acquisition Support Directorate provided members with the "as is" state of geospatial interoperability for 14 POR systems, which revealed progress but that many systems are still 'stovepiped' or not working off a common geospatial foundation.

"To enable a standard and shareable geospatial foundation throughout the Army is more than just providing standards," said Visone. "It's working with the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence on profiles for the standards, providing implementation guidance for the standards and then using the COE as the mechanism to implement a system-of-system approach to ensure geospatial interoperability of these systems."

Visone added that the end state was a consistent common operational picture built off of a content-managed geospatial foundation where all Soldiers, at every echelon, work from the same set of maps, imagery and terrain feature and elevation data.

"While it's a complex problem to understand and solve, the bottom line is that Soldiers want and need a common geospatial view of their battle space," said Visone. "It [SSGF] will provide a consistent geospatial foundation and save the Army money, time and on manpower."

According to Randy Reynolds, Army geospatial programs coordinator and GGB board staff, there are many success stories as a result of this board, largely due to the level of membership.

"This board has influenced Army participation in NSG-wide planning and guidance document production, as well as directly impacting the recent update and release of Army Regulation 115-11, as well as other acquisition decision memoranda," said Reynolds.

In addition to the co-chairs, other board members include senior leaders from Army staff, Army commands, Army service component commands and direct reporting units. And while not a member, the director for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is invited to attend, as he is the functional manager for GEOINT, head of the NSG and the Army works in close coordination with NGA to enable the AGE.

"The important thing to know about the GGB is that, as its name suggests, it is a governance board," said Fontanella. "Members of this board are all willing to roll up their sleeves to drive change."

In addition to the briefings, members were given a demonstration on the Distributed Common Ground System-Army's (DCGS-A), using a tool developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center called "SAGE", Situational Awareness Geospatially Enabled, which enables geospatial engineers and intelligence professionals to create tactical decision aids in support of the military decision making process and troop leading procedures.

The next meeting is set for early third quarter of FY15.