A non-profit collaboration management firm is working with industry, academia and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a new consortium that would bring together a range of companies and other organizations to provide the department with access to innovative border security technology more quickly.
The Border Security Technology Consortium (BSTC), which stood up last month, hopes to work with DHS through an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) method of contracting that provides benefits for the government customer and its commercial and other partners, according to department and industry officials. An OTA enables the government to more quickly get research and development, prototyping and pilot projects under contract.
The BSTC is being managed by the South Carolina-based non-profit company SCRA, which minimizes the burden of government by helping federal agencies, industry, universities and other groups to commercialize applied research. SCRA has the resources to manage OTA’s for the government and conducts competitions for government work using standard terms and conditions across contracts.
Those standard terms and conditions make it easier for any company, particularly small firms and universities that don’t have the resources to go through the time consuming and costly contracting processes associated with the traditional Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), to more efficiently get a contract with the government. Contracts created under the FAR are unique from one to the next and take longer to establish and with federal contracting officials stretched thin, large procurements typically get the attention, putting the smaller contracts on the back burner, Merv Leavitt, vice president of Washington Operations for SCRA, tells TR2.
If an OTA is established, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would release a Broad Agency Announcement through the consortium with the SCRA acting as the BSTC’s management firm, according to Rick Self, the former president of Applied Research and Development at SCRA, who spoke at an industry day sponsored by CBP last month.
Self says that the contracting cycle from start to finish under an OTA is four months versus the typical one year.
The more rapid and flexible OTA process brings in the small firms, as well as companies that don’t traditionally work with the federal government, creating business opportunities for them while availing the government to innovative technologies that it might otherwise not have access too, Leavitt says. That’s a key feature of the OTA that the BSTC hopes to establish with CBP.
And the OTA creates a channel for establishing the small R&D contracts, Leavitt says.
CBP is willing to set up an OTA through the BSTC if technology providers, whether industry or universities, find it valuable, Mark Borkowski, assistant commissioner for CBP’s Office of Technology Innovation and Acquisition, says at a recent industry day hosted by his office last month. Industry “needs to drive it,” he says.
The SCRA is working with Borkowski to have CBP announce a BSTC workshop through the FedBizOpps.gov website, Leavitt says. The workshop would bring interested companies, universities and other groups together to learn more about the BSTC, how it would work, and to answer questions, he says. The goal is for the workshop to be held in June or possibly July.
Already the BSTC has a small but growing membership base. Members so far include Ball Aerospace, which is part of Ball Corp. [BLL], arcAspicio, DRS Technologies, a division of Italy’s Finmeccanica, ICS Consulting, LIST Innovative Solutions, OSI Systems’ [OSIS] Rapiscan Systems division, Vista Research, Old Dominion Univ. and the Univ. of Arizona. BSTC’s vice chairman is Marsha Malone of Lockheed Martin [LMT], which is in the process of joining the group.
The price of membership to join the BSTC is low, $1,000 for large and medium companies and $500 for small firms and universities. Leavitt says that SCRA is getting interest each day from different companies and organizations.
While CBP would be the channel that the BSTC relies on for the OTA, the group is working with other DHS components too including the Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to leverage the contracting possibilities for border security needs, Leavitt says. The group also plans to meet the Transportation Security Administration, he says. The consortium is for any of the agencies that work border security, he notes.
In briefing materials presented at the OTIA Industry Day, some of the selling points for the non-government partners include greater visibility into government needs and priorities, minimal cash flow challenges given the rapid, single-point contracting enabled by the OTA, and the identification of business opportunities. For the government agencies, in addition to the rapid contracting process, the BSTC says they will have more visibility into the state-of-the-art technology.
Leavitt also says that working with smaller companies and “non-traditional” suppliers creates opportunities for teaming arrangements where there is less emphasis on proprietary solutions, which helps the government meet its demand for solutions based on interoperability and open architecture.
SCRA already has experience managing similar consortiums that provide for a closer relationship between companies and the federal government. The company manages the Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium that operates under OTA with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. [For more information: www.bstc.scra.org]