United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office National Security and International Affairs Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2000-04-07 monographic deposited born digital 60 p. GA 1.13:NSIAD-00-33 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33 P0b002ee180388ae1 f:ns00033 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-23 GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33 NSIAD-00-33 Defense procurement Research and development costs Cooperative agreements Research and development contracts Defense cost control Department of Defense contractors Technology transfer Weapons systems Procurement regulations Intellectual property DOD Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program Letter Report NSIAD

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) authority, which was established under Section 845 of the Fiscal Year 1994 National Defense Authorization Act, to use nonstandard contracting approaches to procure research and development services, focusing on: (1) the extent to which DOD has used Section 845 agreements; (2) the benefits reported from their use; (3) how DOD tailored these agreements to address issues normally governed by standard contract provisions; and (4) recent DOD efforts to provide additional guidance on their use.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) DOD has awarded 97 Section 845 agreements as of October 1998; (2) these agreements were most frequently used to support studies of future weapon systems or to design and develop subsystems or components; (3) DOD's financial commitment was concentrated on 10 agreements that accounted for about $2.1 billion, or more than 80 percent, of the $2.6 billion awarded under Section 845 agreements; (4) this financial commitment constituted a relatively small percentage of DOD's overall research and development spending; (6) in a February 1999 report to Congress, DOD cited numerous benefits from using Section 845 authority; (6) these benefits included attracting firms that typically did not contract with DOD, enabling use of commercial products or processes, providing more flexibility to negotiate agreement terms and conditions, and reducing program costs; (7) however, the report provided only limited data to assess the agreements' usefulness; (8) however, the terms and conditions found in Section 845 agreements provided contractors more flexibility in the business processes and practices they employed than typically provided by standard contract provisions; (9) among Section 845 agreements, GAO found little variation in the approaches to financial management, subcontractor management, and termination and disputes processes; (10) in two other areas, DOD officials made greater use of the standard contract clauses in agreements awarded to traditional defense contractors, while using tailored clauses in agreements with commercial firms; (11) the use of a model agreement contributed to this uniformity, but DOD officials often did not address why they selected either the standard contract provision or a tailored approach; (12) DOD has recently proposed new guidance to assist its personnel in determining when to use a Section 845 agreement and how to structure key provisions; (13) the guidance also calls for additional information that would provide senior acquisition executives better insight on selected terms and conditions for agreements involving major weapon systems; (14) it requires that DOD personnel establish metrics to evaluate the benefits from using Section 845 agreements, but does not provide examples or guidelines to help them develop metrics that are measurable and directly related to the agreement's use; and (15) it is not clear that establishing metrics without providing guidelines will lead to appropriate assessments of the benefits of using Section 845 agreements. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33/html/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33/pdf/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33.pdf GAO/NSIAD-00-33 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-00-33 Letter Report GAO/NSIAD-00-33; Acquisition Reform: DOD's Guidance on Using Section 845; Defense procurement Research and development costs Cooperative agreements Research and development contracts Defense cost control Department of Defense contractors Technology transfer Weapons systems Procurement regulations Intellectual property DOD Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program Title 10 Section 2306a Title 10 Section 2371--to Title 10 Section 2371 10 U.S.C. 2306a 10 U.S.C. 2371--to 10 U.S.C. 2371 Public Law 98-369 Public Law 103-160