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GSA, DoD kick off first test with new CSO streamlined acquisition approach

July 25, 2019 By Nancy Cleveland

GSA’s Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM) announced it will begin testing the Commercial Solutions Opening (“CSO”) concept where they will acquire “innovative, commercial items, technologies and services currently in the production/commercialization phase as well as adaptations of existing commercial products.”

The goal of the CSO approach is to streamline the acquisition process and simplify contract terms to attract start-up companies and others who have not previously worked with government.  It’s not quite the same at an Other Transaction Authority/Agreements (OTA), but focuses on a similar objective.

FEDSIM posted the first solicitation earlier this month for the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) for its Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) National Mission Initiative (NMI).

“The JAIC requires an innovative commercial software and services solution that will provide comprehensive data management, end-to-end platform integration, and model/capabilities development of still imagery and computer vision solutions for locating flood affected areas and infrastructure; ultimately identifying at-risk, in-need, and/or harmed/damaged people/infrastructure,” the CSO solicitation states.

JAIC said the commercial system would include 10 characteristics or capabilities, including models to distinguish features like flood lines or dangerous structures, pre-processing, post-processing and integration algorithms necessary to run models as a cohesive, deployable and efficient capability, and integration with new and existing systems.

Responses were due July 22.

FEDSIM says it will post other solicitations for a specific project or technical area of interest when an opportunity is open.

FEDSIM joins the Defense Innovation Unit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Naval Sea Systems Command, Army Materiel Command and the Department of Homeland Security as having launched their own CSO programs, according to Bloomberg Government.

Congress gave GSA the CSO pilot authority in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

Continue reading at:  Federal News Network

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: commercial solutions openings, CSO, GSA

Defense dominates experiment in streamlined bidding for innovation

April 15, 2019 By Nancy Cleveland

Streamlined solicitations for innovative commercial products and services, known as commercial solutions openings are beginning to take off in the Defense Department. Even the General Services Administration’s CSO service, which is open to all agencies for a fee, so far has been dominated by Defense users.

CSOs aren’t as well known or broadly used as their procurement-innovation cousin, other transaction authority, which gives agencies the ability to strike contracts outside the Federal Acquisition Regulation for research, prototypes and production to obtain technology from nontraditional defense contractors. Eleven agencies including Defense have OT authority.

GSA’s CSO holds the potential to bring civilian agencies, most of which don’t have OT authority, the ability to reach out to and select suppliers unencumbered by the Federal Acquisition Regulation. So far, civilian agencies haven’t been biting, but Pentagon organizations are, even though they have their own CSO provider.

The very first GSA CSO customer was none other than the Defense Innovation Unit, a once-experimental buying organization that invented CSOs. Originally designed to lure emerging companies to work for the Pentagon by easing the pain of federal procurement processes, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, lost the X last summer, when it was designated a permanent outpost for testing defense buying boundaries.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2019/03/defense-dominates-experiment-streamlined-bidding-innovation/155373/

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: AFWERX, ANTX, commercial solutions openings, CSO, DIUx, DoD, experiment, FAR, GSA, innovation, OTA, other transactional authority, prototype, R&D, research

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