Watchdogs move to evaluate NGA’s Maven integration

Inspectors general from the Defense Department and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency launched a new, joint evaluation that will comprehensively gauge how Maven — the U.S. military’s pioneering and still-evolving computer vision program — is being integrated into real-world GEOINT operations.

Senior leaders from the watchdogs unveiled their plans to open this new review in a memorandum issued Sept. 9.

“The DOD OIG self-initiated the project based on our ongoing assessment of operations, programs, and risks in the DOD,” a spokesperson from that office told DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

According to the new joint memo, the “objective of this evaluation is to assess the effectiveness with which the [NGA] has integrated the Maven artificial intelligence program into the NGA’s [GEOINT] operations and fielded the technology to DOD mission areas.”

The officials emphasized, however, that they “may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds,” and will also consider suggestions for other adjustments.

“We will perform the evaluation at the NGA. We may identify additional locations during the evaluation,” they wrote.

Responding to a then-intensifying demand for military computer vision applications, the Pentagon originally established Project Maven in early 2017 to help pave the way for wider use of AI-enabled technologies that can autonomously detect, tag and track objects or humans of interest from still images or videos captured by surveillance aircraft, satellites and other means.

In 2022, Project Maven matured into Maven via the start of a major transition, which at that time split the responsibilities for most of its elements between NGA and the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office, while sending certain duties to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.

NGA has long been considered America’s secretive mapping agency, but it’s understood that one of its primary contemporary missions encompasses managing the entire Maven AI development pipeline.

Still, all three organizations running the program have largely been tight-lipped since the transition began — particularly regarding where that process stands and how each of their primary lines of effort may shift going forward. 

“Over the last few years, the DOD OIG has conducted a series of projects on DOD’s development and use of [AI]. Three evaluations have been initiated on Maven — which as you know is one of the DOD’s primary AI programs,” the Pentagon’s OIG spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

The first evaluation, published in 2019, focused on early stages of the initiative’s development. The second was released in 2022 and honed in on specific contracting aspects. 

“With the Maven program now moved from [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] to NGA, the DOD OIG’s third evaluation, announced earlier this week, will focus on how NGA is integrating Maven into its operations,” the spokesperson said.

An NGA spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Thursday that the agency was expecting, and welcomes, this “planned study.”

Updated on Sept. 12, 2024, at 11:50 AM: This story has been updated to include comment from an NGA spokesperson.