“The last several years of Defense spending have a seen a more than seven-fold increase in the amount of money being spent through other transaction agreements for technology development. And although the Navy has been a relative latecomer to OTAs compared to its sister services, the approach is taking off in a big way in the areas of information technology and cybersecurity.”
“In August, the Navy announced it was increasing the ceiling value for its Information Warfare Research Project OTA to $500 million after having exhausted its initial $100 million ceiling in just a little over a year-and-a-half. Meanwhile, last month, officials announced the project’s first three programs to have moved from prototypes to full-blown production systems…”
“To move new technologies to the fleet via IWRP, the Navy is using a provision of DoD’s OTA authority, added in 2016, that lets the government make sole-source awards to the same vendor who conducted the prototype work, as long as the initial prototype was competitively awarded.”
“That was the case with the first three IWRP projects to move into the production phase. All three production agreements were awarded in the closing weeks of Fiscal 2020. They are:
- Master Data Management (MDM), a new system the Navy developed in collaboration with the Defense Health Agency to connect various existing DoD health data repositories as the department continues to roll out its new electronic health record, MHS Genesis…” Read the full article here.
Source: Navy seeing ‘explosion’ in use of OTA for IT, cyber development work – By Jared Serbu, November 19, 2020. Federal News Network.
