Congress Pushes to Broaden OTAs Applicability, DoD Response is to Narrow It

Christian Dunn (0:01)

Hello, welcome to another podcast, Innovation in Government Business. I'm Christian Dunn, Managing Partner at Strategic Institute for Innovation in Government Contracting. I'm sitting down once again with Rick Dunn, Founder at Strategic Institute for Innovation in Government Contracting, and DARPA's First General Counsel and other Transaction Pioneer. Luke, I am your father. Rick actually ushered in OTs into DoD and is in many ways the father. So you are guilty of bringing in new flexibilities into DoD acquisition.

Rick Dunn (0:43)

True.

Christian Dunn (0:45)

So Rick, you've been keeping, as you always do keep up, keeping up to date with the legislative process and how it affects other transactions and flexible and innovative contracting. And you've looked at what's been happening in the house. And it looks like they're going to get rid of, or they're trying to get rid of subsection D, which is all the little qualifications to, in order to be awarded another prototype, other transaction agreement. So again, another indication that Congress, expressing the will of the people, wants to open this up, open these flexibilities up, correct?

Rick Dunn (1:22)

Correct, yes. Subsection D, other transactions flourished for about 10 years. And during my tenure at DARPA, they continued to grow and, in fact, ended up being used in the Army's largest acquisition program. But shortly after I left government, someone who thought they knew what they were doing but didn't, pushed for having Section D of what became 10 USC 4022, the prototype authority, restricted to various categories of companies and to various hurdles that had to be crossed.

Probably sitting there saying, you know, what is this authority for? Let me see. It's probably for small businesses or for research institutions, or, you know.

Christian Dunn (2:17)

So they didn't really understand the authority, but they knew that it needed to be limited.

Rick Dunn (2:21)

It, it, Subsection D definitely limited the authority when, in my vision, what I started with research authority and then prototype authority pushed for follow-on contract authority. The whole idea was to create an alternative to the ponderous system that existed, which, you know, going back, as we keep mentioning, or I keep mentioning, the Packard Commission found that the traditional system costs too much and takes too long. That was what we were trying to do, create an alternative to this ponderous system that is not just the contracting part of it, but also the requirements and the whole budgeting paraphernalia that goes with it that burdens the system, and quite frankly is a big turn-off to most of American industry. You know, American industry will sell products to the federal government, to the Department of Defense, but when it comes to research and development and creating entirely new capabilities, there's so much that's inimical to the way commercial business usually does things, that they just refuse to do business with the federal government.

Christian Dunn (3:36)

Timelines, cost, work flow, all these things exist sort of in separate universes from each other, and they don't mix very well.

Rick Dunn (3:45)

Checkers, checking checkers, and all sorts of things. Delays for paperwork, I mean, we talked about moving projects at the speed of science as opposed to the speed of bureaucracy. I mean, this is just a huge disconnect for me.

Christian Dunn (4:02)

I mean, even just the simple things of returning email, there's a massive difference in the timing difference. I learned as a small business owner, you get back in touch with people within 24 hours. With the government, it might be days, days. So, you know, one of the things that I've been thinking about is that, you know, when I was growing up, they kind of said, you know, before you use slang or colloquialisms, you should develop an appreciation for the full language. You should understand standard English and really get a broad perspective before you narrow it down and use little different things. It seems like to me, when it comes to other transactions and flexibilities, is people are learning the slang and the colloquialisms before developing an appreciation for what these things really, the whole understanding of what these things are for.

Rick Dunn (4:57)

There seems to be, I don't understand it, but there seems to be a push to look up the small end of the funnel rather than look at the whole, you know.

What can go, how big is this thing? What can go into it? How, what can we flow through this process? And it's not putting the tiny end under the faucet. It's putting the big end under the faucet and realizing this can take about, you know, tiny projects, medium-sized projects, huge projects, things that have never been done before can fit within the funnel of other transactions.