Williamsburg, Va. -- When the Department of Defense needed support to develop its newest contract capability, it turned to the Army Contracting Command -- one of Army Materiel Command's major subordinate commands.
Leaders at the forefront of military contracting provided insight into DOD's Commercial Solutions Opening, recently unveiled by the Defense Innovation Unit -- Experimental at the third Army Innovation Summit at the College of William and Mary, Aug. 16-17.
The CSO is a two-step, competitive Other Transaction Authority contract mechanism that allows DIUx to award funding agreements to non-traditional commercial entities, and traditional defense suppliers under certain circumstances, to carry out prototype projects provided on the DIUx "technology areas of interest" website.
"Within 60 days, we can get from publishing the problem to having the technology in the hands of a warfighter for prototyping," said Lt. Col. Karl Gossett, Army representative to the DIUx office in Silicon Valley, California.
Founded in April 2015, DUIx was reorganized in May to provide the organization with more agility and a flatter, partnership-style leadership structure.
As the new DOD initiative takes shape, ACC is providing DIUx with the means to work with companies that don't traditionally partner with the military. These companies drive the commercial research and development that Army and DOD expect to play a key role in equipping the warfighter with next-generation technologies.
"[Technology] companies view DoD as risk-averse, very demanding, with statutory and regulatory processes that make doing business unattractive," said Maj. Gen. James Simpson, ACC commanding general. "DIUx was created specifically to look at ways to take advantage of innovative commercial technologies, and one of the processes under that is the Commercial Solutions Opening that was tailored to address some of the complaints of high-tech companies."
DIUx pathways director Lauren Schmidt, a former special assistant to Army acquisition leadership, described the effort to establish the CSO as an evolution of an existing model to solicit OTA contracts.
"The CSO allows DIUx to work on a fast, flexible, dynamic basis with companies that don't traditionally contract with the government," she said. "ACC has been a valued teammate from day one."
DIUx partner Dr. Chris Kirchhoff provided Army Innovation Summit 3 participants with an overview of the group's structure, mission and purpose, noting his companies' access to about $20 million in research and development funds.
DIUx is comprised of three teams:
1. Venture Team: Akin to a venture capital firm, the venture team conducts company outreach, establishes relationships with technology firms and conducts the technical and security diligence prior to executing a contract with a tentative partner.
2. Foundry Team: Similar to a technology incubator, the foundry team, "is much more about going after technology that has not yet been productized on the market, but is coming," said Kirchhoff. One of the foundry team's recent explorations has focused on virtual reality headsets, such as the Oculus Rift.
3. Engagement Team: "The engagement team's mission is to introduce entrepreneurs to the military, and to introduce the military to entrepreneurs. A lot of people working in California and Boston have never met someone in uniform, never been on a base, never really wrapped their minds around the warfighter missions," said Kirchhoff. To build those relationships, small groups of military and industry will participate in immersion trips.
"One of the beauties of this is it is a negotiable process," said Gossett, while reflecting on the two-step process for awarding the CSO. "From the moment we start that contracting process, the proposal development, working through the context of the prototype and then the follow-on, is that it is all very much a negotiated process between the unit that is getting the technology and the company that is developing the technology."
Instead of the traditional, lengthy process of establishing detailed requirements for a given solution, the CSO provides both the government customer and the commercial technology provider with a problem statement that brings both parties together to have a negotiation about the outcomes expected of the CSO -- from financials to intellectual property.
Potential partners submit solution briefs, which are no more than five pages long and may consist of plain text or briefing charts to DIUx for consideration.
"The good thing about this process is you are allowed to come pitch your solution brief in person. Also we've shortened the award time. Once we seek the proposal, our goal is to award it in 30 days," said Simpson. "If you have ever submitted a proposal to the government, it was probably 250 or more pages."
While DIUx is in its infancy, its first two contract awards have taken only 31 and 32 days from proposal to contract, said Simpson.
At the innovation summit, Kirchhoff emphasized that this contracting capability does not exclusively reside within DIUx, and Congress granted it to the entire department.
With Army, industry and academia actively working through events like the Army Innovation Summit to identify problem areas and potential solutions, the DIUx team expressed optimism for the future of the Army's adoption of the DIUx model through programs and policies that are tailored to the service's needs.
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