Stacey Dixon, deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and a 2020 Wash100 Award recipient, has said that the agency’s internship program is an example of its efforts to encourage workforce innovation, DoD News reported Thursday.
Dixon said at this year’s virtual Aspen Cyber Summit that NGA is looking to encourage students to pursue agency careers while diversifying the government workforce.
Speaking on the need for innovation, Dixon said potential employees must work through bureaucracy issues and figure out “how to interact and collaborate within the government to get your ideas to move forward.”
She added that NGA is encouraging its personnel to leverage commercially- and publicly-available information to move missions forward.
“We’ve been astounded at the types of products and analysis we’ve been able to do that has either been standalone products or products that we could bring in and enhance with classified information,” noted Dixon.