Geospatial Intelligence Standards Working Group (GWG)

GWG ESB Activities

What is the ESB?
The joint DoD and IC Enterprise Standards Baseline (ESB), commonly referred to as the “DISR,” is the minimum set of IT standards and related information/guidance documents necessary to enable interoperability and information sharing through and between the DoD’s Joint Information Environment (JIE) and the IC’s Information Technology Enterprise (ITE).
The ESB is jointly maintained and populated by the DoD and IC through the Joint Enterprise Standards Committee (JESC) standards governance process. Criteria for the selection of standards and processes for the recommendation, selection, and maintenance of standards citations in the ESB are governed by the JESC operating procedures.
GWG DISR Activities

What is the DISR?
The DoD IT Standards Registry (DISR) is a single, unifying DoD registry for approved Information Technology (IT) and National Security Systems (NSS) standards and standards profiles making up the ESB. The DISR tool, DISROnline, is used to facilitate the JESC process.
NOTE: The DISR contains only standards citations and pointers to the locations of standards, indicating where a user can obtain them. No standards are contained within the DISR.
The DoD Services, Commands and Support organizations, and federal/civil agencies participate, through Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), in the standards selection process. Configuration management (CM) of the ESB is done by submitting and adjudicating Change Requests (CRs) through the DISROnline tool. The JESC Calendar identifies the schedules and meetings used in the CM process.

Access to the ESB

The ESB is housed in the DISRonline, You must have a PKI Certificate or CAC to request a DISRonline account. For information on obtaining an account, click here.
IC access to the ESB is facilitated through the IC Enterprise Registry and Repository (ER2) Sharepoint on JWICS.

GWG's ESB Responsibilities

The GWG is a Technical Working Group under the JESC, and as such has the responsibility to:

Identify new GEOINT standards to propose for inclusion in the ESB
Elevate emerging GEOINT standards to mandated status once the selection criteria defined in the JESC SOP have been met
Update an existing GEOINT standard to reflect its latest release
Tag as sunset a GEOINT standard identified as being near the end of its lifecycle or for which a replacement is in progress or a trigger event identified. The tag requires both an event that must take place as well as an estimated date.
Retire a GEOINT standard that is no longer essential to net-centric interoperability and is not necessary to enable interoperability of existing systems.
Identify, develop, and maintain standards profiles that facilitate a net-centric environment.
Provide a forum for the evaluation, acceptance, and changes in status of GEOINT standards and standards profiles contained in the ESB.

The GWG carries out these responsibilities by identifying GEOINT SMEs within its membership community, coordinating standards identification activities, and facilitating the DISR change request processes for recommending and maintaining GEOINT standards for inclusion in the ESB. The GWG conducts three polling sessions throughout the year to coincide with the JESC’s ESB update schedule.

For more information on the DISR, DISRonline, and how to access GWG information on the DISRonline, click here.

GEOINT Standards in the ESB

The GEOINT standards under the purview of the GWG are defined within the following three DISR Service Areas:

GEOINT: Geospatial - Geospatial includes dictionaries, definitions, models, metadata, and formats to facilitate mapping, analysis, exploitation, portrayal, and exchange of geospatial data.

GEOINT: Motion Imagery - Motion Imagery includes the tasking, collection, posting, processing, storage, exploitation, discovery, retrieval, and exchange of motion imagery, associated metadata, audio and other related media types whether generated from electro-optical (EO), infrared (IR), or other motion imagery sensors.

GEOINT: Still Imagery - Still Imagery includes the tasking, collection, posting, processing, storage, exploitation, discovery, retrieval, and exchange of digital imagery and gridded data associated with geospatial intelligence. The standards in this service area address imagery and gridded data topics such as formatting, compression, support data, metadata, graphical and textual annotations, image quality, and imagery-derived data and products. Applicability includes EO, IR, overhead non-imaging IR (ONIR), synthetic aperture radar (SAR) phase history data, SAR (complex and detected) imagery, multispectral imagery (MSI), hyperspectral imagery (HSI), ultraspectral imagery (USI), Polarimetric Imagery (PI), Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR), Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), raster maps and charts, and Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI).