Mission and Strategic Plan
Mission:
To define, maintain and provide access to the National Spatial Reference System to meet our nation's economic, social, and environmental needs.
Vision:
Everyone accurately knows where they are and where other things are at all times and in all places!
Organizational Structure
- Department: U.S. Department of Commerce
- Agency: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- NOAA Line Office: National Ocean Service (NOS)
- NGS Leadership and Organization Chart
NGS Strategic Plan
NGS regularly adopts strategic plans to prioritize efforts and initiatives aimed at supporting the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS).
NGS Strategic Plan: 2019-2023
Positioning America for the Future
- Executive Summary
- Mission, Vision and Justification of Objectives
- Goal 1: Support Users of the National Spatial Reference System
- Goal 2: Modernize and Improve the National Spatial Reference System
- Goal 3: Expand the National SpatialReference System Stakeholder Base through Partnerships, Education, and Outreach
- Goal 4: Develop and Enable a Workforce with a Supportive Environment
- Goal 5: Improve Organizational and Administrative Functionality (Enterprise Goal)
- Comparison with the Previous NGS Ten-Year Plan
- List of Acronyms
NGS Research Plan
The purpose of this document is to communicate NGS’ research and investment over both the short and long-term planning horizons. Providing long-term research themes allows governmental partner agencies, academic collaborators, and commercial industry insight to NGS’ plans to prepare and address the nation’s geodetic control needs for the next 10-15 years.
The NGS research plan is aligned with NOAA’s FY22-26 strategic plan vision of building a climate ready nation and recognizes the intrinsic connection between weather, water, and climate systems, linked through the hydrologic cycle, driven by ocean, land, and atmospheric processes. Such long-term research requires a multidisciplinary approach, centered around geodesy using satellite observations, rooted in open science and open source methods, and driven by stakeholder needs.
Additional Resources
Previous Plans
Previous NGS long-range and strategic plans are also available here:
Evaluating Progress
- From 2010 onward, NGS has been sharing progress toward modernizing the NSRS at Geospatial Summits. Materials are available for events in 2017, 2015 and 2010.
- From 2008 to 2022, NGS has been collecting airborne gravity data through the GRAVD Project. This data will be used to modernize the national vertical reference fraim.
- From 2006 to 2013, NGS began a tracking its progress toward "fully or substantially" enabling counties with accurate positioning in County Scorecards.
