The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has one of the federal government’s most demanding missions: delivering world-class geospatial intelligence to policymakers, service members, intelligence professionals, and first responders. To meet that mission, NGA must constantly modernize its technology while balancing speed, resilience, and security. Mark Chatelaine, the agency’s Chief Information Officer and Director of IT Services, explains how that modernization is unfolding through cloud adoption, zero trust architectures, and artificial intelligence.
NGA’s cloud journey began in 2014 and 2015, when the agency was instructed to move applications and data into the cloud to reduce costs and close data centers. That early push revealed a crucial reality—not all workloads belong in commercial clouds. Some applications and data must remain close to analysts, which led NGA to adopt a hybrid cloud approach. Amazon Web Services initially won the agency’s sole-source cloud contract, but national leadership later encouraged competition and shared workloads. Chatelaine says moving to a multi-cloud environment makes sense because it improves resilience, pricing, and operational flexibility.
The driving force behind these changes is what Chatelaine calls “high-tempo operations.” Warfighters and first responders need data in real time to make life-or-death decisions, whether on the battlefield or during natural disasters. If NGA’s systems are not
performing at their peak, those users may not get the information they need when they need it. That imperative shapes every choice NGA makes in its IT strategy.
Cybersecurity is another area where Chatelaine emphasizes a shift in thinking. NGA no longer talks about “cybersecurity” in isolation; the focus now is on “cyber resilience.” With adversaries around the world constantly developing new methods of attack, NGA cannot assume it will prevent every attempt. Instead, it builds systems designed to continue operating even under attack. Zero trust architectures are central to this approach, but Chatelaine stresses they must be implemented without slowing operations. “We have not seen any reductions or delays within our performance capabilities, because we ensure that we develop systems that have resilience built into them,” he says.
Zero trust is not a single technology, but a broad set of practices and tools. NGA has been implementing components for over a decade, and new advances—especially in artificial intelligence—are adding power to those defenses. Chatelaine notes that AI can detect malicious activity faster than human analysts, giving NGA a way to react in real time to incoming threats. Integrating these AI models is one of the agency’s biggest current challenges. At the same time, open source intelligence, including commercial satellite imagery and other global data, adds further insight into where adversaries are operating and how threats are evolving.
Artificial intelligence is also transforming NGA’s workforce. The agency collects vast amounts of imagery every day, far more than any number of human analysts could review. “We could probably increase our workforce by 100-fold, and it wouldn’t be good enough,” Chatelaine says. AI allows NGA to process images at scale, identifying patterns and anomalies so analysts can focus on the most critical insights. Beyond mission operations, NGA is beginning to use AI to support employees with tasks like writing self-assessments and helping supervisors evaluate performance. Chatelaine underscores that these tools do not replace human judgment but act as assistants to make processes faster and more effective.
Through all of this, NGA’s modernization journey is ongoing, not a one-time shift. The agency is evolving from a single cloud provider to a resilient multi-cloud model. It is reframing cybersecurity as resilience, building systems that endure rather than break under attack. And it is embracing artificial intelligence not only to secure networks and analyze imagery, but also to empower the workforce itself. For Chatelaine, the vision is clear: NGA must deliver intelligence “at the speed of need,” ensuring that policymakers, service members, and first responders always have the right information at the right time.