Apart from the traditional request for proposal bidding opportunities, there are other ways to start winning federal contracts and making big bugs as an IT company in the federal marketplace!
FIVE METHODS TO USE
1. Other Transactions Authority (OTA)
Over the last three to five years, OTAs have been steadily rising in terms of the amount of dollars from the government spending. This is due to the fact that it is commonly used by the Department of Defense (DOD) to carry out prototype, research, and production projects.
Generally, this method is not required to comply with federal laws and regulations that apply to procurement contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. The good thing about this is that it seems that the government is making it easy for people to bring them IT solutions.
In order to look for these specific opportunities, you can hop over to beta.sam and type the keyword, OTA. Thereafter, you will be provided with OTA opportunities to start responding to.
2. Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO)
This method is a merit-based source selection strategy for the DOD to acquire innovative commercial items, technologies, or services that directly fulfill requirements, close capability gaps, or provide potential technological advances.
3. Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)
This method is used by the government to request scientific or research proposals from private firms concerning certain areas of interest which may lead to contract opportunities.
This is a bit similar to CSO however it applies to the acquisition of basic and applied research. This means that it is more aimed at advancing the state of art or increasing knowledge and understanding rather than focusing on a specific system or hardware solution.
4. Agency Incubators
The first agency incubator in this section is In-Q-Tel which has an office within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). With this, they act as an interface center of the agency in order to find private
companies to help work on unclassified problem sets and fill the gaps.
The next one is the Silicon Valley Innovation Program which is established, in their own words, to help reshape the government. They are working with the Department of Homeland Security to reach out to the innovation community in terms of new and previously inaccessible technologies that can help strengthen national security.
Lastly, we have the Defense Innovation Unit which provides non-dilute capital in the form of pilot contracts for commercial innovation to solve DOD problems. They do a lot of pilot contracts ranging from 25, 000 to 100, 000 that includes hardware, software, or unique services and their ideal target in terms of awards is 90 days.
5. Best In Class And Spend Under Management
This falls under the General Services Administration and has 12 IT categories which includes the NASA SEWP, IT schedule 70, Army CHESS, 8a STARS II, VETS2, Alliant, and Alliant 2 Small Business.
If you’re a small business, this is a way for you to break in the government because these usually last for five to twenty years and are always compared to subcontracting.
RESOURCES
If you want to watch the full video to learn more about the five ways to start winning federal contracts and making big bugs as an IT company in the federal marketplace, then be sure to click the link below:
Five (5) methods I use to teach IT companies to make Big Bucks – Eric Coffie
