Acquisition Innovation: From Other Transactions to Fast-Pitch Proposals

A list of DARPA's greatest hits includes technologies that have had a profound and lasting impact - breakthroughs that can, and have, reshaped the world. One innovation less familiar with a broad population has played a pivotal role in breaking down the barriers of government contracting, providing companies a clearer path to contributing to the national security mission.

Other Transactions (OTs) are a popular government purchasing mechanism to acquire and field commercial technologies more quickly and cost efficiently. The use of OTs for the Department of Defense originated at DARPA. Despite their widespread use and the broader goal of streamlining business between government and the commercial sector, OTs still elicit some misunderstanding.

To get a sense of the persistent barriers, DARPA's Contracts Management Office (CMO) recently held an OT Workshop aimed at addressing specific challenge areas and finding solutions.

"This is part of a larger effort as we're looking to see how we can speed things up and how we can demystify some of these issues around how OTs work," said Effie Fragogiannis, director of DARPA's Contracts Management Office and senior procurement executive. "We started by deciding to do a workshop to bring in industry and hear from them - what are the challenges they are facing, and how can we address those and have more effective conversations and negotiations?"

The top five challenge areas identified from the RFI responses include intellectual property rights, expenditure-based versus fixed milestone OTs, ambiguity in milestones and acceptance criteria, burdens associated with cost proposal documentation, and uncertainty around resource sharing and contributions for non-traditional defense contractors.

Additionally, the workshop resulted in key areas of recommendations and improvements, including the incorporation of relevant model OT agreements with solicitations, options for enabling better cash flow, better information sharing early on and throughout the process to minimize confusion, better use of industry days and draft solicitations to help with teaming, and increased training and more robust education on the mechanics of OTs.

"We were able to say, 'we hear you,' and we understood the challenges they were facing," Fragogiannis said. "We didn't solve all the challenges in one day, but that wasn't the intent. But we had never done an OT workshop with industry before. By bringing industry into the room, we were able to have face-to-face collaboration, we were able to dispel misconceptions, and we were able to open up communications and start breaking down those barriers so we can do things better."

Planting the Seed-lings of Innovation

The OT workshops are just one of the acquisition innovation efforts under way at DARPA. In March the agency hosted a Seedling Week, during which proposers that successfully responded to a solicitation for new areas of research were invited to a present their ideas. The results: three successful same-day OT for Prototype awards for winning, fast-pitch proposals, including one small business that is also a first-time DARPA performer.

Up Next

In addition to comprehensive trainings already being hosted twice a year, CMO is building on the success of the OT workshop with two "OT 101" webinars planned for August 2024, which will be open to small businesses, non-traditional defense contractors, and academia. CMO will also hold another in-person OT workshop in October 2024. RFIs will be posted to the DARPA website on May 1 and in early June for all three events.

"We're not here to hide behind the shadows. The whole point is we're here, we're DARPA, we do a lot of OTs, here are the challenges we're seeing, let's work together to do better," Fragogiannis said. "DARPA stays committed to collaborating with industry. We want to have this win-win situation; we want this to be a two-way street. The whole point of OTs is to allow for this kind of flexibility."

New to DARPA? Resources are available to help navigate DARPA contracting - from opportunity announcements through the proposal process and beyond - through DARPAConnect. Registration is required to access the learning tools through this free, comprehensive resource on doing business with the agency. CMO will also be participating in upcoming DARPAConnect events.

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