ICYMI: OTAs – What’s The Big Deal?

Good afternoon, everyone. It's twelve o one, so I'm gonna go ahead and start. Welcome to today's webinar OTAs, what's the big deal? My name is Archisha Meehan, and I'm the founder of Fed Consult, a federal focused consulting firm specializing in strategy, research, and market intelligence. And I'm super excited to have with us Doleres Kuchina Mussina. Doleres is the founder of Rexota, a powerhouse boutique firm specializing in federal contracting strategy, small business growth, international procurement, and academic innovation partnerships. So agenda today is pretty simple. After a quick introduction, I'm gonna I have a couple of slides on the OTA trends, and then we're gonna delve straight into the presentation by Dolores. A cup and then get into q and a. A couple of housekeeping. You know, the webinar is being recorded, and the presentation slides and the webinar will be sent to all the attendees. It will also be posted on GovSpend's website. So, you know, give twenty four hours to GovSpend to get that, but it is you know, everyone will have access to that. And, also, please ask your questions on the q and a tab that's out there. That helps us keep track and make sure that is being answered. So definitely ask your questions. It is gonna be a very interesting session for sure. So a little bit about GovSpend. GovSpend provides intelligence on the federal and state local education procurement procurement through their platforms. There are couple of platforms. The FedMind platform is the federal market intelligence solution. It typically it it basically integrates nineteen datasets into one easy to use solution that provides customers and users really integrated access and view into the federal data. The GovSpend platform, it is the state and local education platform, which delivers a comprehensive view into the buying and selling at the state, local, and educational level. They also have a very interesting solution called market intelligence. And if I mistake not, you know, they've started introducing interesting AI into the solution. So we definitely encourage people to check into that. So let's delve straight into OTAs and why are we having this webinar. Right? The data actually is available in FPDS. It comes as under OTAs. And interestingly, the first OTA that was reported was actually in two thousand four and was to United Airlines, which I found pretty interesting. Over the past twenty years, you can see that OTAs in f y twenty four actually reached eighteen point three six billion dollars, so which is crazy. And you can actually see how, you know, the trend is from two thousand sixteen is when we see that exponential growth in OTAs. Right now, I wanna say year to date is at about seven, eight billion dollars, so I won't be surprised if it'll cross that and reach, you know, more than the last year's numbers. That's my feeling. I also wanted to quickly show a cup you know, what is super fascinating is the fact that, you know, in FY sixteen, we were at one point six billion dollars, but that's grown to eighteen point three six. But what is also interesting is that civilian agencies were the agencies that used to use OTA, specifically Homeland Security. Post two thousand sixteen, we have seen an increased use by defense agencies more than ninety odd percent. So, you know, this is why we are here today. We wanted to delve more into OTA awards. You know, you could read more about the data on on my blog that is on GovSpend's website. But I really want us to delve more into OTAs and what is the big deal. Right? So having said that, I am super thrilled to introduce Dolores. With over a decade of hands on experience managing complex high stakes pursuits against state, local, federal, and international public procurement, she brings operational expertise and policies insight to the table. She has a PhD in public administration and policy, an MBA, and is an NCMA fellow and certified federal contract manager. She actively contributes to research on innovation policy, procurement reform, and other transaction authorities shaping the future of federal acquisition. And I am so thrilled that we actually have her today. And having said that, Dolores, I'm going to go on mute and hand over the presentation to you. Awesome. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for being here during your lunch hour. Please enjoy your snack, your coffee refresh, and, take your time. Ask the questions. Don't worry about them being dumb questions or silly questions. If you don't want them public, feel free to also message us after the webinar. We're happy to answer them as well. Alright. Next slide. Just a quick disclaimer. This is just for general information only. This isn't legal advice by any means. So if there is legal advice that you need, please make sure talk to your legal counsel or you talk to your organization's legal counsel for further information. Alright. Next slide. Today, what we're gonna cover is we're gonna go through these major bullets. We're gonna talk about what are the basics of other transaction authorities. So we're gonna baseline everyone on the call, set the record straight as I like to say it because I know that there has been a lot of misinformation, a lot of myths that are out there about other transaction authorities. We're gonna go over what some of those, federal other transaction authorities are, how do you find them, where what kind of publication solicitation methods are there, some negotiation best practices, and then we're gonna wrap up with a q and a. Alright. Next slide. Alright. Let's start with what are the basics of other transaction authorities. Essentially, what other transaction authorities are is that they are a flexible acquisition instrument in order for the government to be able to take advantage of the most innovative solutions outside of the traditional, federal acquisition regulations. And, originally, other transaction authorities, were established in the nineteen fifties, so they predate the FAR. I know we're going through a major regulation overhaul right now, but the OTAs did do predate the FAR. And they were established in order to help us beat, the Soviet Union during the for the Space Act. It was established for NASA. So if you know the legend or the lore of OTs, this is old news to you. But if you're not aware, NASA was the first to use the language other transactions in their statue. However, National Science Foundation were the first ones to use the model in essence in the early nineteen fifties, but they did use other, agreements. So they don't give full credit, but I like to give that shout out to them because I know the legend of NASA and the Space Act. But if you if you ever wanna go to trivia night and they just happen to ask about OTs, you can challenge that. You know, you can challenge the person asking those questions. Where do we usually see other transactions used? So when we talk about other transactions, what most people are familiar is, how Department of Defense uses them. So when you attend other webinars, when you attend other lectures, or you read, papers about other transaction authorities and other transaction agreements, what you will be reading is a lot of information that's mostly related to Department of Defense. Why? Well, they have the biggest budget, but, also, they are the person that everyone wants to work with. You know? They're the popular kid in school, as they may say. They are the ones that are the most loud and proud about how they're using other transaction authorities and rightfully so. They had to fight for it in nineteen eighty nine to get it, and they have been the leaders in helping drive how OTs are viewed today. NASA uses them. Other agencies as well use them. And the key thing that I would like for every single one of you to walk away with today is that not every statute, that authorizes agencies to use other transaction agreements is the same. Department of Defense's statutes are very unique to how Department of Defense wants to execute other transaction agreements. It is not applicable to all other agencies. There are some agencies that leverage it, but not all. The other thing that really to keep in mind here is the key drivers is, again, for government to get access to cutting edge technologies and also for them to be able to bring in those companies that are not necessarily seeing the government as an appealing customer. As we know, you know, there's some compliance hurdles. There's other things that make the government not appealing as a client, and it can be very difficult to navigate the space. So other transactions are there to help make it easier, lower the barrier of entry for those companies so that the government can take, advantage of their knowledge, their expertise, and their technologies to bring them in. The other piece of it is the government really wants to make sure that they're leveraging commercial best practices. And as we know, sometimes, you know, the FAR is flexible, but sometimes those regulations can be burdensome to some small start up commercial companies, especially in negotiating all those terms or getting familiar with what traditional procurement contracts look like. So other transactions are supposed to help make that better because you are tailoring the agreement, between between you and industry if you're a government in order for it to be an appealing agreement and something that you both are working closely together on. Alright. Next slide. Key principles and legal framework. I know you've heard me keep hearing me say flexibility. The biggest thing about that flexibility is the negotiation of the terms. You really are starting from what I what I would want to say is a blank page, but we know that's generally not the case even in the commercial world. But the government is generally starting with a blank page, and they're supposed to be tailoring that agreement to what the project is. And the benefit of that is that you can you can create milestones. You can really craft it into something that makes sense for the effort that you're doing. So if you're creating a process development or special software tool for the government to use, that agreement might look more like a trial basis agreement versus something that what we traditionally see on traditional procurements like an IDIQ type contract. The idea, again, is that the government is trying to work towards more collaborative relationship versus a cooperative relationship, which is what the federal acquisition regulations instill. And it says in FAR part one that it's supposed to be a cooperative kind of relationship in the current FAR part one. I I know some of you are probably reading the red lines, but in today's world, as we see it, it currently says that it's supposed to be a cooperative arrangement or a cooperative, relationship. The other piece is to provide competition and transparency, so to encourage the less formal, way that we may operate under the federal acquisition regulations. And, again, I know that there's this myth that other are lawless. They're the wild, wild west. People use it to circumvent the federal acquisition regulations. And I want to dispel all of that for everyone on this call because the idea is there's a lot more legwork that the government has to do in order for them to essentially justify the path of using another transaction. That is why a lot of times the language that you see in these statutes, it will say, you know, they are able to use other transactions when a traditional procurement, cooperative agreement, or grant is not applicable. So during acquisition planning, what the government has to do is they have to go in, and they have to be able to determine if they're gonna go traditional procurement or nontraditional procurement, or are they gonna do an assistance instrument in awarding, the type of work that they're trying to fund. And then they have to also justify what is that going to look like because there's various ways, to contract out. We all know the cone that DAU posts, right, with FAR and non FAR when it comes to Department of Defense, but a lot of those also are available to civilian agencies. And so it's important for the government to be transparent and to help increase competition to bring in those companies that are not traditionally used to doing business with the government by using these other flexible methods like other transactions to to make, again, the government be an appealing client. Now, again, I I mentioned it is not lawless. It is not the wild, wild west. There's still laws, that apply. They are exempt from a lot of the public procurement requirements that are in the federal acquisition regulations, which is why a lot of times you hear OTs being, defined by what they are not versus what they are. So you when when you're looking at all of this information, you know, keeping in the back of your mind that when it comes to OTs, everything that you know that's related to the federal acquisition regulations and everything that is related to its supplements are not going to apply here. Everything that has to do with criminal law, NIST requirements, foci, export import controls, security, clauses, those are going to apply. Intellectual property clauses, those are gonna apply. You are still building a legally binding contract, little c, with the government. So you still have to have all of the elements of a legally binding contract that legal is happy with. You still have to follow the law. The government still has to follow those public procurement best practices. They just don't have to follow, for example, FAR part fifteen procedures. So that's why we also use a lot of different language when it comes to other transactions to help move people away from using assumptions of the language that we use every day when it comes to traditional procurement, which is why you see me distinguishing between agreement big a or contract big c, because in in the space agreement, big a means other transaction agreement or a or an assistance instrument. And then big c contract would generally mean a traditional procurement contract that is subject to traditional procurement regulations. Alright. So the big ta da. Next slide, please. This is what the landscape looks right now. And just to preface this, I am updating the study. Ben McMartin and I started the study in twenty eighteen of looking at all of the agencies and comparing all of these statutes. I know that DHS, currently has expired. So if you caught that on the slide, you get an extra brownie point. Please treat yourself to taco night. It's taco Tuesday, so it's very appropriate for you to go out and enjoy something delicious. But DHS is working on getting that renewed actively. They don't wanna lose it. But you can see that all of these statutes exist, and we primarily really focus on Department of Defense because they do spend the most of the money. We saw how much money is going through of of what was shown earlier through GovSpend. But there's also new agencies that are getting these authorities, you know, on an annual basis. The intelligence community has been the biggest, I would say, outreach across the federal landscape because the intelligence community is not just one agency. It's multiple agencies. And so that really expands who is leveraging the Department of Defense Authorities or modifying it. You'll notice the Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, also leverage what the Department of Defense's authorities are. Department of Energy is a little bit behind on their statute. They still reference the old numbering, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll get updated soon. Every time I do this webinar, I hope that someone from Department of Energy is there and they're working actively on updating that statute. NIH, for example, is very specific in the programs that they, authorize through their other transaction authorities. They want to make sure it focuses on specific research. That's why you see that they have four authorities, and I believe they're working on some additional ones. And then we have also ARPA h that has their own authority that's within the HHS family, and that's to stand up that that own agency itself just like ARPA e was stood up by its own authority. The other piece that I keep alluding to, and and I wanna give an example of, is how different these statutes are. And when we talk about other transaction authority or OTA, we're talking about the statute that authorizes the agencies to use other transaction agreements or other transactions for short. And NASA being the first one, they are also the most broad, which their entire statute has not changed much, since the nineteen fifties. In fact, it hasn't really been updated at all in the language that authorizes it. It just says you will do other transactions. If it doesn't fit within anywhere else, you will report it on the NASA's website. So if you go to NASA's websites, you can look at their report. They do not it is not, in their statute to report it in FPDS. They report it just solely on their website, but you can see what type of work that's being, funded through NASA. While Department of Defense is what we live in, and that's where we hear the terms nontraditional defense contractor, that's where we hear the term one third cost share. It's also where we see a lot of the conversation about, you know, how much money is actually going to be spent through the statute and it being prioritized. So one thing, especially with Department of Defense, this idea of the nontraditional defense contractor, which is defined in ten USC thirty fourteen, that is being leveraged by other agencies as well in saying, hey. We need to bring in these raditional contractors. And that definition has expanded, since inception. It does not hold the same weight it did when FAFSA was passed. It holds a very different weight when it comes to today's age. When originally, when it was mentioned in FAFSA, it really meant how we instinctively think of what a nontraditional contractor is. Today, it's really defined by if you haven't had a full cast contract in twelve months from the solicitation, you're considered nontraditional. Well, that's ninety eight percent of all companies. It's very rare to see a full CAS or cost accounting standard compliant contract nowadays. A lot of times, it's modified. So knowing that, you can see that understanding the definitions, reading the statutes is really important because the assumptions that I see made and the mistakes I see made a lot happen because people are baselining their thoughts on what does the DOD statute say that must apply to everyone else, and it doesn't. These are very broad. They span very different languages. They have very different requirements. Reporting requirements are also different across all of these statutes. They do not all require them to be, reported in FPDS. They could be reported in in internal records, which is okay as long as they're being reported. In all honesty, most of the time, it's one person with an Excel spreadsheet that tracks all of those OT agreements. So if you know that person, or if you have ever known that person, I've I've known one of those people, They they deserve a lot of delicious baked goods because they are the ones that are proving that these are still being used. Their OTs are still well leveraged. And in the NDAA, I know I know we've seen the executive memos, which we'll get to a little bit later in this presentation, but we've seen the executive orders mentioning that OTs are the preferred method. They have been the preferred method since twenty sixteen. Congress has already said it, and they keep saying it on an annual basis. But we don't have necessarily the number of agreements officers to support the volume nor do we have a really good, I would say, workforce that is able to leverage all of these authorities to the full potential. But the good news is they're gaining some popularity as you saw in the numbers. So I believe that there's gonna be a prioritization in getting more agreements officers, especially now that there's clarification that an agreements officer does not need to be a contracting officer. The other piece that I do wanna highlight is I know that most people don't run to the NDAA to read it, which is the National Defense Authorization Act. You want to pay attention to what the updates are because a lot of times, congress is updating the statute in the NDAA, which you will later see in the statute, usually about three to four months after the NDAA is passed, capturing those changes. So make sure that no matter what, every year you put on your calendar to update the records you have on what that statute says or before submitting a proposal to a solicitation that references another transaction statute, you read it to see that if it changed or if it's still the same. I recommend that for government. I recommend that for industry, just because a lot of times, there's things in there that get missed or there's different there's changes to the requirements based on protests, where congress already catches it and they already put it within the context of the statute. Alright. Next slide. And, Timothy, I see your question. I'll answer that on the next slide. Alright. Publication and solicitation methods. When we generally think of what are the traditional acquisition or FAR based publication methods. We think of market surveys. We think of request for quote, request for proposal, request for information. We have been trained to go into sam dot gov as a government contractor and look for all of these, keywords. And and great, because it really does help you in the grand scheme of things of how most opportunities are posted. When it comes to the innovation stage and when it comes to other transactions, you can see the list is much longer in what's being utilized, and that's because there's not necessarily a regulation or something in the statute that says they have to use a specific type of solicitation method or publication method. So, other transactions also are not required, the solicitations being used, like broad agency announcement, commercial solutions openings, industry days, they do not have to be published in sam dot gov. It has become a best practice over the last two years to also include it there. But, again, remember, we're we're trying to think about how do companies that don't generally do business, with the government find opportunities. And and instinctively, we don't go to sam dot gov. If it when you first started in the government space, you didn't go to the central location. You probably went to, you know, army dot gov or army dot mil website and and try to figure out where do I find these opportunities. How do I figure out what this what this agency is buying or this PEO office is buying? And that's because that's how that's how we purchase as consumers. So the government is trying to make sure that there's less barriers of entry. In terms of, the question that we have, in the chat of con the consortia model, there are about six consortia management groups, and they all hold either a contract or an agreement to be a to have a consortia. And those are generally posted for a specific technology area or strategic focus area, something that the government is trying to find or locate. And so members of that consortia will then be able to bid on those opportunities. Those opportunities are posted on the website of the consortia management group and the consortia so that if you're not a member, you can still see what those opportunities are, and you can become a member if you need to. Additionally, some of those fees do sometimes get waived. Especially right now with a lot of what's going on in the market, some consortium management groups are waiving their annual fees. Some of them have been waiving them since COVID, and some of them have been waiving them forever because it's part of their model. You can go, for example, you can go on ATI's website, and you can find all of the consortias. I also have a list. I'm I'm happy to share that as well. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to to send you those resources. I tend to share it on my LinkedIn regularly. But they they do have a model. It does work. It consortia is not a negative word or a poo poo word. We do not avoid them. They are another tool in the toolkit. They are an active contract or agreement that if you have a customer that has money but might not have a a contract shop that can that can use it, there is opportunities where that consortium management group might agree, with the with their government client to take on that contract, especially if there's any interagency agreements. So don't avoid them. Don't think that they're negative. Consortiums work well. The consortium model works well in state and local and academic practices. Department of Defense does do it slightly different, but that's okay. As we know, Department of Defense does everything slightly different, and we love them for it. They keep us on our toes. But BARDA also has, their own consortia. I think ARPA h has their own consortia as well. They might actually have two. So it's not just Department of Defense that's leveraging it. To make it easy for everyone, if you're thinking, k. My my head's about to explode. You're giving us a lot of information, Dolores. What's my easy button? Your easy button is going to be you really wanna look at broad agency announcement and commercial solutions openings. If you're if you're used to going into sam dot gov, those will generally will be paste posted at sam dot gov. A lot of hackathons are starting to get posted there as well. And remember that each of these opportunities may lead you to something bigger. So I have seen where someone went from a pitch event, and over a few years, they had a full, you know, program of record afterwards because they work to develop their technology over time just from that little bit of funding, and they've been able to prove to the government that this is a viable product. So don't avoid those. On top of the consortia model, partnership intermediaries are good. The reason for that is because you generally see them as incubators and accelerators. So, organizations like Catalyst Campus, Griffith Institute, the Wright Brothers Institute, all of those are partnership intermediaries, and their whole purpose is to help connect government to industry, and and and they do it, to also help test the technology for the government a lot of times and prepare industry. So, again, it's another tool. It's another way for you to look for these opportunities. Okay. Next slide. Alright. We talked about a little bit about negotiations and this being a flexible way for you to do business with the government. One thing, you know, that I wanted to highlight here is everything that you can negotiate. And I and I know, again, you're looking at this, and you're like, well, that just seems like the entire, the entire agreement. And in fact, it is. You lot of what you see here is not gonna have the same weight that you have with the federal acquisition regulations. For example, intellectual property, it is not gonna be based on necessarily what you see in the federal acquisition regulations or in its supplements. You can negotiate different things. Like, for example, agencies have negotiated with industry to sell government intellectual property to industry, which you can't necessarily do with a FAR based agreement. But here, you can structure in a way that you can have that language and you can actually agree to how you're gonna how you're gonna exchange whatever, in terms of intellectual property, what you can patent, what you can't patent, what the government has rights to, and and that's all negotiable. Also, termination. I'd like to touch on this one, especially this year because, you know, there's been a lot of conversation about termination for convenience. In terms of other transactions, it does not have the same black mark that it would have in a FAR based contract. Your termination in, in other transaction would be very similar to what you would have or it should be very similar what you would have in a commercial agreement where it's more of the two parties deciding what what determines that we call it quits. And, usually, what you see that coupled up with is a disputes clause. Right? You wanna make sure you're giving the ability for someone to to identify a dispute, have some remedy associated with it. And if if nothing else works, nothing else fails, you can always terminate it. And it and it's just you two parting ways. It's not necessarily, you know, you you being condemned for the fact that the government terminated for convenience on you. I know it's kind of a harsh word for this Tuesday, lunch break, but I know that this has been heavy on a lot of people's hearts, especially as they're losing their contracts right now. Accounting system, I like to touch on that. Generally, it's GAAP accounting system, or generally accepted accounting system. What that basically means is you have to have a viable accounting system. You don't have to follow what you know, again, the the federal acquisition regulations or its supplements say you you need to have, but you have to have something viable, something auditable. That way the government can make sure that you you have a sound business. That's really what they're looking for, that you know what you're charging, how you're charging it, and that you have consistency. The last thing on here is I get a lot of questions about payment terms because people are used to, again, traditional way of payment terms. For other transactions, they're separated in two different types of, agreements, which is fixed price. So you can do those payment terms monthly. You can do them based on milestones. You can do agile if you want to and associate them with something else. Or if it's expenditure based, you can decide how you may want to get compensated for materials. For example, in some instances, the government may fund you in advance of you ever finalizing negotiations. They don't like doing that, but they know that with start ups, you know, liquid isn't necessarily always available. So they may agree to give you some money to help buy the servers or buy some of the equipment that you need to build or lab equipment, things like that. And then they may pay you for labor on a monthly basis. And expenditure based does not mean time and material. It does not mean cost reimbursable. Expenditure based means that you're gonna break down your costs as the way that you receive them and how you break them down. You're not gonna be diving into your g and a, your overhead, your fringe because, again, you have to think about how does the rest of the world do business in the commercial world. And when we talk to our contractors, when they come to our house, right, and if they're trying to do our siding, we're not asking them, you know, what's your profit margin on this job? What's your g and a? What's your fringe? That's not that's not how the commercial world operates. So, again, the government here is trying to be flexible in the sense of we need to make sure there's a goodness factor. We can account for how you do your accounting, but we also need, to know that we have to be flexible in the way that we need to receive information again for transparency, accountability, and in order for us to do proper reporting and documentations. Alright. Next slide. Alright. So I know there's a lot going on right now, in terms of, legislation, executive orders, sec def memorandums, things like that. This is a really good synopsis. If you wanna take a screenshot when you get the slides, all of this is linked. The one thing that's not listed here is the speed act, and I'll tell you why that's important in a second. But all of these, in some way or another, either prioritize other transactions. They usually are coupled with commercial solutions openings, are against solicitation methods, not a a award instrument, but it's it's becoming more and more popular for commercial solutions openings because, again, this administration is prioritizing commercial offerings, product services coming to the government. So no wonder commercial solutions openings are on the top of the list. The Innovate Act, that's going to you know, that's gonna affect how a lot of companies are getting funded. If you're part of the small business innovation research program, SIBR, or its sister program, SIDR, the Innovate Act and the SIBR SIDR Reauthorization Act are gonna be really important for you to follow. There's some key key changes, being, proposed. Of course, not finalized. It still has to be, it still has to be voted on. The FORCE Act is really key here because there's a lot of updates to removing unnecessary, and, for lack of a better word, outdated statutory requirements. So in a sense, that's really good because, again, remember, the FAR overhaul is really focused on not having a regulation if there's a statute. So making sure that they actually clean up the US code is gonna be really important. And then the executive orders and the sec dev memos really focus on one thing, and that's, as a whole, it's, again, to bring in as many commercial companies or companies that are not necessarily doing business with the government and and and eliminate the barriers that exist that make it hard for for industry to work with government. I know that's a very high level. I'm sure they're you know, I'm sure you've read all of these, and and you know all the nuances I'm skipping. But the key thing to take away is everything that we have seen over the last thirty five years since the federal acquisition regulations have passed, the conversations have been very cyclical in the sense that we keep going back to saying, hey. We need more commercial companies to do business with the government. We add on additional compliance requirements that creates a barrier, then we take those barriers away by doing something different, and then we say it again. And so if you're wondering, am I living on Groundhog Day? Because I remember when FAFSA was passed. I remember in the nineteen eighty eight when DARPA was trying to get their OT. You know? All of this seems like the same conversation or a very similar conversation. It is because we're we're constantly gonna be in this push and pull, and that's okay. It's just a matter of also recognizing that this is not new. This is not a scary time to be here. It's actually really exciting because finally, people are paying attention to the fact that other transactions, authorities are important. They're growing, and, agencies are are working more diligently to figure out how to utilize them better, how to get smart on them, and how to actually, have the right, knowledge set within their organizations in order for them to execute them, efficiently. Alright. Next slide. And then we'll jump to q and a. This will be our last one. So to wrap up, again, this is an exciting time, to to not only just, you know, watch what's happening with the acquisition reform and the FAR overhaul, but also to understand that the focus really is on small business commercial and to bring in new, and exciting tech. And being able to leverage this information is gonna be really key. This fiscal year, we we have some barriers. I know, we're not that far away. We're now only two months away from fiscal year end. I know I can't believe it either. September thirtieth is right around the corner. But this is great information for you if you're working on your capture plan for next year or if you're government and you're sitting here or you support the government and you support any acquisition planning. Think about what kind of information you really need to have in order for you to meet the admission needs or the program needs that you have. You may be able to break down the work in several steps for you to leverage different pathways to make sure that you're leveraging everything that you have in your toolbox. And I see some questions. So I'm gonna pause right there so that we can go ahead and get to the q and a if that's okay. That works. This has been so informative. Always learning. Always, always, always learning. Right? Yeah. Should I go ahead and read the questions? Or I have them up. I have them up. Why don't you go Yeah. Yeah. So I'll go with the first one. It says, I thought OTAs were not required to be reported in FPDS unless they're production OTAs. It depends. So there in terms of Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, it is part of their guide and their best practices to report their OT agreements in FPDS, and it is for prototype. So so anything with a nine in the ninth digit of the award instrument, that should be reported in FPDS. Production OTAs do not have a specific instrument ID number, so there's not a way for you to identify them. And it's not going to be a number because not every agency delineates, their statute for production. So you typically just have research and development, which is denoted by the number three in the ninth digit, or prototype, which is denoted by the nine in the ninth digit of the award instrument. And, again, each statute will determine where they need to be reported. Some agencies are still waiting to get access to be able to report an FPDS even though it is a stat statutory requirement. So, you know, just like us not being able to get access to certain stuff, agencies are struggling with the same thing. And FPDS, you know, feeds in GovSpend, and it also feeds into SAM data. But Dolores' preference, I will tell you for my PhD, I used FPDS, and I took a long time to scrub that data because requirements have changed. The way that's reported has changed. For example, consortia management groups do have to report who the who who were the performers on the OTs, and that gets tracked in FPDS. They are not the awardee, but they are tracked in the record. So you can look up each award and see who is actually the performer of the work. Alright. Next one. Let's see. HHS ARPA H received OTA authority approximately three years ago. Yep. Guess that's not really a question, but yeah. I think you even touched on it, but Yeah. In in the yeah. And then there is a chat that says that we're working with the group at NIH with funding, but no access to procurement stuff and resources for the institute. You reckon? Yeah. For for that one, that one's tricky. If they don't have procurement staff or resources, I would then look to see if they have any interagency agreements or if they can reach out to you know, if they're able to maybe work with ARPA h's contract shop. Are they able to maybe leverage a consortia management group? Maybe there's a consortia that's set up for what they're what they're looking for. So I would look there. I would also look to see if there might be another office within NIH that has the agreements officers that you might be able to tap into. So that's how that's where I would start. And and the way that I start there is usually I will look at who's posting the solicitations for that agency and see who the point of contact is and give that information to whoever I'm working with on the government. Because that contracting officer or agreements officer may not necessarily answer to me, but they'll definitely answer their buddy in the office or someone that that is working to get something on contract. And I and I will say right now, it'll be whoever you can find that is still there. I always said after after June thirtieth, whoever is still there in the contract shops, you know, they're gonna be the ones that are we're all gonna be leaning in on. So make sure, make sure to look them up and and find those resources. And if you have any additional questions, Matt, feel free to also just reach out on LinkedIn. Happy to help there too. I see a question about a list of consortia's. How do you find them? So you can go to the consortia management group websites. So there's ATI, SoSEC, c m what are they? Consortia management group, CMG, and there's another one. But I have I have a list. So, Adrian, if you wanna reach out on LinkedIn, I can send you, I can send you that information as well. Perfect. I had a question, Dolores. Does, do can the state local agencies use OTAs, or it's just federal? The statutes are only federal, but state and local have their own flexible, methods that they can they can leverage. Unless they have some kind of partnership with a federal agency, they can leverage it then, but it depends on that relationship. Got it. I don't see any other questions, but I have your contact, and I guess LinkedIn is the best way for people to reach you. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Okay. So anyone who wants to reach out to Dolores, please do so. She is a wealth of information as you all heard on LinkedIn. Yes. The recording is going to be sent to everyone. It will also be posted on GovSpend's website. So if you don't receive an email, check out GovSpend's website, and you will find it there. I believe if there are no other questions thank you so much, Dolores, for taking the time and presenting all your valuable information. And have thank you everyone for joining us, and we look forward to having everyone join us for our next webinar and busy times ahead. So let's stay involved and see where acquisition goes, but OTAs is gonna be important. There's no doubt about it. So Yes. Absolutely. And thank you. Have a great day. Have a great day. Bye bye.