Via Satellite illustration.

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) has doubled the ceiling value of a contract for analytics to monitor economic impacts. NGA announced this week it is raising the value of the Economic Indicator Monitoring (EIM) contract from $30 million to $60 million. 

The flexible contract was first announced in September 2021 with five vendors — BAE, Ball Aerospace, BlackSky, Continental Mapping Consultants, and Royce Geospatial Consultants Inc. According to NGA, analytic services acquired through this contract are used to “monitor activity to understand the economic impact and trade trends that affect financial markets, other studies of scarcity and military capabilities worldwide.” This could include the flow of raw materials, agricultural products, equipment, fuels, vehicles, waste products, and other goods.

This increase is to buy additional orders from the current vendors. NGA has awarded nine delivery orders to date with a contract value of $27.5 million. 

“Given the timing of likely Congressional increases to the FY23 budget again for commercial GEOINT and the EIM program support to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, it is prudent to leverage NGA’s current EIM vendor pool to continue to provide world-class geospatial-intelligence,” NGA said in a Nov. 15 announcement. 

BlackSky has won $14 million total in orders in the first year of the five-year contract. BlackSky said this overall increase shows demand for satellite monitoring services. 

“This ceiling increase validates a growing demand for real-time, AI-driven monitoring services that reveal economic activity at manufacturing hubs, major maritime ports, and airports around the world,” said Patrick O’Neil, BlackSky chief innovation officer. “It also demonstrates NGA’s growing interest in procuring commercial analytic services to support its broader mission.”