The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is reviewing its current acquisition structure in favor of adopting an architecture widely used across the Department of Defense, the program executive office (PEO), an agency official said this week.
The PEO model will be used for acquisition business, projects, programs and contracts, Phil Chudoba, associate director for capabilities at NGA, said during the agency’s virtual industry day. He pointed out that the new structure “will probably be familiar” to the attendees.
The NGA’s current acquisition structure is modeled on integrated program offices for its major systems acquisitions (MSAs). Other programs and contracts are typically managed within the agency’s various directorates.
“The transition to a PEO structure will provide a more formal, organized, and coherent acquisition structure for all acquisition activities at NGA, including MSAs, programs, projects, and contracts in order to provide better programmatic oversight, reporting, auditability, and workforce management,” the agency told Defense Daily in an email reply to questions. “The PEO structure will also enable internal and external stakeholders to better understand the interrelationships and dependencies among our programmatic efforts.”
The initial phase of the new structure is expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2023, the agency said, adding it will likely include multiple PEOs with “appropriate tiers of program managers and project officers.”
The forthcoming transition to the PEO structure is one of a number of actions NGA has been undertaking the past two years to improve its procurement and contracting performance, Chudoba said. The acquisition workforce has been enhanced and “fully understands the business of intelligence, the business of DoD and IC (intelligence community) acquisition,” he said.
NGA is also “very deep in Agile contracting practices,” Chudoba said.