got geoint?

Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off Post from got geoint? Here we are. It’s the week after GEOINT Community Week and like we said on Friday, our heads are still spinning a bit from the news of the DNI resignation. And on top of that General Clapper is being named as a potential candidate to replace Blair. Anyhow, we wanted to make sure this MMNKOP (we still love that acronym) focuses on the latest DNI news, but also highlights all the other news that is of interest to the GEOINT Community. As we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on.

Intel Post a ‘Wicked Problem’ for White House
Prominent political figures and intelligence veterans aren’t exactly leaping at the opportunity to replace Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence (pictured with Obama and Leon Panetta) who was ousted by President Barack Obama last week after losing a series of fights with the CIA and presiding over an intelligence system that failed to detect beforehand three significant terror strikes. Intelligence analysts say the next DNI will inherit a job with a big mandate – overseeing a sprawling U.S. intelligence bureaucracy largely suspicious and resentful of him – but little real power to carry out reforms, and a position first in line to take the inevitable political heat. Read the full POLITICO article here.

Intel Workers’ Pay System Unfair, Study Says
A soon-to-be-released report on the intelligence community’s stalled pay-for-performance system is likely to conclude that its implementation was flawed, in part because it was rushed and gave better ratings and raises to higher-ranking employees. The report, by the congressionally chartered National Academy of Public Administration, is expected to recommend that only managers and supervisors be covered by the system in the first year it resumes. Then, the intelligence community should re-evaluate the system and decide whether to expand it to nonsupervisory employees. Read the full Federal Times article here.

Library of Congress Holds Conference on Origins of Portolan Charts
John Hessler, mathematical wizard and the senior cartographic librarian at the Library of Congress, slipped into the locked underground vaults of the library one morning earlier this week. Slim, handsome, intense, bespectacled, Hessler approached a priceless 1559 portolan chart on the table before him, sketched in the hand of Mateo Prunes, the Majorcan mapmaker. The nautical map of the Mediterranean and Black seas is inked onto the skin of a single sheep. Read the full Washington Post article here.

Mapping the Clouds
The effects of the volcanic events of mid-April were felt beneath the Earth’s surface, even over 1,000 miles off. Audible relish tinged the voices of London Underground announcers, momentarily liberated from routine. No “person under a train” this time, no “signal failure”, nor even the ubiquitous “adverse weather conditions”, but “a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland”. Above ground, too, announcements abounded. The airwaves hummed with the catastrophe’s keywords – “Cloud!” “Ash!” “Ice!” – all repeated earnestly to mask the fact that the origin of it all was unutterable, a ghastly edifice of Nordic sounds bearing little phonetic relation to the 17 letters that constituted them. Read the full Fortean Times article here.

Intergraph Expands Motion Video Exploitation Solution to Advance Analysis Capabilities of Defense and Intelligence Agencies
Intergraph has expanded its Motion Video Exploitation solution, a powerful platform that enables defense and military analysts to geospatially integrate video with multiple intelligence sources to provide situational awareness and actionable intelligence. Intergraph GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst Professional, a full-motion video analysis product, empowers military, coalition forces and agencies to exploit and analyze full motion video from UAVs and other moving vehicles, and combines with image analysis and surface analysis products to provide unprecedented situational awareness and strategic decision making capabilities. Read the full press release here.

Happy Monday!

Tags: Dennis Blair, Dennis Blair resignation, General Clapper, GEO, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, Intel Pay, Intergraph, Intergraph GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst Professional, ODNI, Portolan Charts, USGIF