Geospatial Trends in Government
March 2011 | Volume 3 | Number 3
OTFL Interview Dr. Joseph Fontanella Army Geospatial Information Officer Director, Army Geospatial Center (AGC)  Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella was recently appointed to the Senior Executive Service to serve as the Director of the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC) and is also chartered as the Army's Geospatial Information Officer (GIO).
“Our ultimate goal is to serve Soldiers as well as our strategic partners and others who rely on our ability to deliver timely, accurate and actionable Geospatial information and services,” Dr. Fontanella told On The FrontLines in a recent interview. In the first of this three part OTFL interview, Dr. Fontanella talks about his new job and ongoing efforts to reach out and meet personally with stakeholders and partners. He stressed how important it is to make sure the AGC is being “relevant, ready, reliable and responsible” to its customers and stakeholders in its everyday actions. He talks about the convergence of voice, video, data and imagery and how the Geospatial community, the Army and the public might benefit; what new apps are on the horizon; and how the brigade commander would benefit from better information management tools to handle the increased amount of information at their disposal. And he talks about the recently held, innovative “Apps For The Army Challenge”.
On The FrontLines
Since you served as AGC Deputy Director, you know the challenges as well as the opportunities for success. Now that you are Director, what are your immediate action items? What are your priorities? Dr. Joseph Fontanella, Army GIO/AGC Director First of all, our ultimate goal is to serve Soldiers, our strategic partners, and others who rely on our ability to deliver timely, accurate, and actionable geospatial information and services. Moving towards that goal, we are orienting our focus on a couple of tenets. The first is adhering to that old Army Corps of Engineers motto – “be ready, relevant, reliable and responsible”. We want to build upon our successes within the GEOINT community as a reliable source of high-fidelity geospatial data. Second, we want to remain relevant to the DOD by making certain that the ongoing operational functions we perform are closely tied to our mission. Finally, we need to ensure that we are tied to the future. By wrapping those things together, we get to the smorgasbord of needs that our warfighters must have addressed. OTFL: How do you spend a typical day? Dr. Joseph Fontanella, Army GIO/AGC Director One of the things I’m working towards right now is connecting with partners and stakeholders. These are folks we have had relationships with in the past, and need to resolidify. Also, because we operate within the DOD, there are always names changing across the spectrum. As new people come into positions of leadership across that spectrum of partners -- industry partners, stakeholders and customers -- you need to go back out and spend time with them. My time is spent reintroducing myself to this community and becoming better acquainted with the AGC’s operations from my optic as the new Director. As Deputy, I spent a lot of time working on the functional aspects of the organization. Now the focus is a little bit different. As Director, I am spending time with my teammates here to reshape what we are doing to meet the goals and objectives set forth to accomplish our mission. We need partners in this business. We are a small agency and do a lot using very few resources. So, we really have to focus on developing partnerships with others; really narrowing in on customers’ requirements and making sure we fully understand them. At the same time, it is our responsibility to understand our customers' processes, their capabilities, and their requirements to the fullest extent possible. Doing so allows the AGC to use its small cadre of subject matter experts appropriately to bridge the gaps where our customers most need our support-be it better comprehension of geospatial technologies, engineering principles, data availability and analytics, information architecture, training, and visualization, etc. The net effect is that our customers are better educated by us in confusing and complex geospatial issues, therefore enabling us to work with them more effectively by accurately refining their requirements as well as servicing their needs. So it’s not just about forming strategic alliances. It is more than just deciding to work together. You have to take it to next level by developing “forcing functions” to ensure you agree on a way ahead; you must have a shared vision of what you want to be doing together. Then, you can set up realistic goals and objectives with milestones to move forward on those things. I am trying to bridge the gap between developing and executing strategies, and realizing an outcome that is mutually beneficial to all parties involved. OTFL: The worlds of Geospatial, 3D visualization, storage and communications are converging. Can you comment on the convergence? Dr. Joseph Fontanella, Army GIO/AGC Director It’s not just Geospatial information, but also supporting technologies that are converging. The ways in which we exploit data are undergoing a revolutionary change. Every day, there is a new application, a new thought. Look at what happened in Egypt and the Middle East. Things we saw as perhaps social networks are really much more than that now. They are weapons. They are means of communications. They are ways of instigating change. We have to be more sensitive and situationally aware of these tools. The Army is working to overcome the tactical challenges posed by the plethora of systems, software, and data availability. The more data we collect, the more data we have to process. Look at the cover of a recent Newsweek. There was an article on “Brain Freeze”. It begs the question “have we too much data to make decisions?” So, you have to be able to bend that data in ways that make it digestible, understandable, and useful to commanders, given the complexity and sensitivity of their current operating environments. The Army has to be able to exploit timely, accurate, high-resolution, and actionable geospatial information; that has become more important than ever. For example, look what at a Brigade Combat Team commander has to do. He has a multitude of mission command platforms and information systems, and many of them don’t allow for easy information transfer and sharing. So, in essence, commanders are drowning in data; they have never had so much information at their disposal; and, at the same time, we have never had a greater need for better information management. That is a sizeable challenge. However, I do believe both the Army and the civil sector are going to benefit from the convergence of text, video, voice, and imagery that is readily available in all shapes and forms from commercial providers as well as state and local government providers. Today, individuals can collect detailed images from their iPhones, Androids, and other handheld “smart” devices with little or no GI&S training. GI&S has become a commodity-just about every citizen, every resident, every employee, and every Soldier can become a sensor. You can take a look at how the gathering of voluntary geographic information played out in just the mapping of Haiti during the 2010 earthquake. So, how do we get at all this and truly benefit? You need to standardize the means of collecting, processing, exploiting, and sharing data. These things have to be developed and set upon before we can truly benefit from all of the information these sources provide. If we can’t convert the data into actionable information, then it is either just noise and can become a distraction; or, it could be some pretty important data that is just being missed. Commanders need this important information to complete their missions. The Army recognized the challenges inherent in the collection of data from the multitude of these sources and its overall impact on the Warfighter. So, the focus we took was to develop an Army Geospatial Enterprise that had to be tied to the larger Army enterprise. It is still in the process of being built. The ultimate goal of this network is to enable Army GI&S information to be posted, processed, and used as necessary. It can also be shared from peer-to-peer, echelon-to-echelon, vertically and horizontally; from the individual Soldier, up to the national level, and back down in the other direction. OTFL: What new apps are on the horizon? The Army is working to benefit from the speed, portability, and computation power advantages that are being offered by the next generation of hand held devices, including iPhones, Androids, and BlackBerrys. The Army recently sponsored a CIO/G6 “Apps For the Army Challenge” to help overcome some of these mission-related challenges through the power of mobile Web and Web services. This is progress. The contest was a real shift away from “traditional” Army acquisition programs and development practices. What they are doing instead is a good example of using the latest, agile developmental methods and focusing on rapid deployment. Some of our folks here -- our partners at the Engineering and Research Development Center -- developed a “Top 5 Winning App” for the Android called “Movement Projection”. This is a map-routing app for road navigation that allows Soldiers to input obstacles and threats to calculate the best and fastest route from Point Alpha to Point Bravo. This was successful among young people here. If the Army continues to invest time and effort into these apps, the Soldier will be able to leverage the speed, processing power, and portability of these “smart” devices in their daily operations.
The AGC: Relevant, Ready, Reliable, Responsible The Army Geospatial Center (AGC) mission is to coordinate, integrate, and synchronize geospatial information requirements and standards across the Army; to develop and field geospatial enterprise-enabled systems and capabilities to the Army and DOD; and to provide direct geospatial support and products to Warfighters. The AGC supports the Army's LandWarNet/Battle Command concepts, capabilities, and systems -- facilitating dissemination of relevant geospatial information to every echelon throughout the dynamic battlefield environment. The AGC supports the Army, DOD and the Nation by: Executing policy and implementing standards while monitoring emerging technologies and validating Army Geospatial Enterprise (AGE) technical solutions Serving as the Army Knowledge Center for geospatial expertise by providing direct support to Army units and activities (geospatial data production, analysis and reachback) Providing technical, acquisition integration, and logistical support to Army select Programs of Record and transitional technical capabilities under Army and Joint Capability Demonstrations, while also building and maintaining the Army Geospatial Logical Data Model Conducting Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation (RDT&E) focused on increasing the agility of Battle Command across the full spectrum of military operations - from conventional armed conflicts to counterinsurgencies and irregular warfare; and research new technologies and methodologies which leverage geospatial data and information in order to augment analysis and mission planning, helping the Warfighter make a more informed decision. Source: Army Geospatial Center. www.agc.army.mil
Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella Director, Army Geospatial Center (AGC) Army Geospatial Information Officer
Dr. Joseph F. Fontanella was recently appointed to the Senior Executive Service to serve as the Director of the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC), and is responsible for supporting the operations, intelligence, acquisition, research and development as well as modeling and simulation communities with geospatial information. He is also chartered as the Army's Geospatial Information Officer (GIO), with responsibility for collecting and validating geospatial requirements, formulating geospatial policy, setting priorities and securing resources supporting the Army Geospatial Enterprise, as well as synchronizing geospatial solutions at both Headquarters, Department of the Army and Secretariat levels of Army governance.
Dr. Fontanella began his federal career as Assistant Director for Plans and Program Management with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Alexandria, Va., after retiring from the Army at the rank of Colonel after 26 years. He served as Deputy Director of the AGC from 2006-2010.
Fontanella holds a Doctorate degree in Educational Leadership, Master's degrees in both National Resource Strategy and Geography, and Bachelor's degrees in Environmental Science and Landscape Architecture, while his military education includes attendance at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces as well as the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is a Level III certified acquisition professional, as well as a licensed landscape architect in the States of Maryland and Texas, as well as the Commonwealth of Virginia. ▪ |
