ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Navy’s top acquisition official on Tuesday said the service needs to continue using more fast acquisition tools to better pivot to new threats.
He singled out other transaction authorities (OTAs): acquisition instruments other than contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements that aim to provide more streamlined ways to work on prototype projects and then turn those successes into follow-on production.
OTAs are not subject to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) contract rules and its supplements.
The Navy has “not deployed them at the same scale of the other services yet” but it is “an area we’re working on,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts said here at the NDIA Expeditionary Warfare conference.
Geurts noted the Navy has already doubled its use of OTAs executed over the last year. Still, even with this doubling, the service is considering expanding its use of this tool.
He added the Navy needs to field emerging technology like artificial intelligence faster to maintain superiority over potential adversaries, and OTAs can be useful for that.
Geurts has previously talked about the importance of pushing decentralization in Navy acquisition to better pivot between challenges and get ‘pivot speed at scale,’ (Defense Daily, May 2, 2018).
However, Geurts said OTAs must be used appropriately since “it’s just a tool like anything else” and the Navy should not execute “an OTA for an OTA’s sake.”
He said the Navy needs to better understand how to use these kinds of rapid acquisition tools overall.
“The biggest challenge I have is deploying the skill to use OTA’s effectively” across the government. Geurts noted this can also apply to industry.
“While we didn’t like it all the time, we’ve all been very proficient at FAR-based contracts,” he added.
Geurts cited the utility of OTAs during recent naval exercises where the service was able to rapidly award prototype contracts for technology that could support the exercises ahead of time. Alternatively, if officials saw something they liked during an event they could rapidly purchase them through OTAs.