Nancy Morgan
Intelligence Community CDO, Office of the Director of Intelligence
Nancy Morgan leads efforts to increase data interoperability across the intelligence community and with external partners develop and retain a more data-savvy IC workforce, drive adoption of common data capabilities and transform human-and-machine-enabled interaction with data.
These efforts are critical to helping the IC deal with the increasing volume and variety of data it collects and produces every day.
The breadth of Morgan’s responsibilities encompasses all 18 IC elements to make valuable intelligence information more discoverable and accessible. Key outcomes include establishing a common IC data management lexicon, foundational work on data lifecycle management solutions, and enhancing partnerships to treat all information as a valuable IC asset.
Morgan says her teams and partners had to get creative on how to collaborate as they navigate through the pandemic while driving intelligence integration to address an increasingly complex national security threat landscape. She and her fellow CDOs continue to innovate by pushing the envelope for how to work differently in a more blended world of classified and unclassified environments.
“How can we use data and information differently to transform our intelligence tradecraft?” Morgan says. “For me, it is all about ensuring we get the right information, in the right form, to the right people (and machines) at the right time. I believe we can improve our efforts to share more information and still safeguard sources and methods, by including better metadata tagging and management right from the start.”
Within Morgan’s office, her team is reimagining the IC’s information and data landscape for the digital age.
“We are building and enabling external partnerships to mutually share information, ideas and innovation to inform decision-making at all levels,” she says. “By doing so, we are advancing the IC mission and strengthening our national security.”
Morgan recently kicked off the IC Chief Data Officer Council effort to refresh the IC Information Environment Data Strategy, actively engaging across the IC, government and industry.
“The intelligence community depends on seamless data interoperability,” she says. “The value of our data is diminished if we do not get the right information to the right people (and machines) at the right time and in the right form. It may sound like a bumper sticker slogan, but that really is what this is all about. Then we have to be able to get that information to anywhere it needs to go around the world ‘at the speed of mission.’”