Dr. Keith Littlefield serves as chief information officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Springfield, Va.-based mapping agency led by Letitia Long.
Before joining NGA, Littlefield served as associate deputy director of national intelligence for acquisition, technology and facilities in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from September 2009 to July 2011, where he also served as ODNI’s senior acquisition executive and leadership and oversight to more than 50 system acquisitions in the intelligence community.
Those acquisitions were worth more than $150 billion, according to NGA.
In that capacity, Littlefield also provided guidance on space planning and facility upgrades for more than IC facilities worldwide and worked with the Pentagon’s acquisition office on acquisition workforce competency across the IC.
He also led acquisition at NGA between 2007 and 2009 as director. As functional manager for acquisition systems, he was responsible for systems engineering, program management and contracts management for the development and deployment of the National System for Geospatial-Intelligence.
Littlefield also served as the chief acquisition executive at NGA, holding responsibility for providing leadership and guidance on all agency acquisition activities. He also served as director of the InnoVision directorate, where he was responsible for managing GEOINT advanced research and development in 2006, and was also formerly the deputy director of acquisition between 2003 and 2005.
He initially joined NGA in 1983, when it was known as the Defense Mapping Agency, and was initially assigned to the Digital Products Department at the Hydrographic/Topographic Center, prior to moving into the Division Techniques Office in 1985.
In 1986, he was promoted to the special program office for exploitation and modernization and held several senior level program manager positions, tasked with the technical development, integration and implementation of state-of-the-art digital mapping systems.
In May 1993, he became the senior technical adviser for advanced cartography as a defense intelligence senior level. Nearly four years later, he was promoted to the defense intelligence Senior Executive Service as the Chief of the U.S. Imagery and Geospatial Information System Architecture Office, subsequently serving as the deputy and director of the Acquisition Systems Office.
Littlefield holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Maryland, specializing in geographic information systems and remote sensing. He also graduated from the University of Virginia in 1981 as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow, with a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning. Prior to that, he graduated from Mary Washington College in 1979, with a double major in geography and economics.
Littlefield is a recipient of the DNI’s National Intelligence Superior Service Medal, awarded in 2011, and the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, awarded in 2010. He also received the NGA Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 2009.