Executives say OTAs are 'changing the game'

The Pentagon's use of other transaction agreements to speed acquisition is significantly changing the business environment, contracting executives said this week.

Speaking to Inside Defense at the Association of the United States Army's annual conference in Washington, Sean Bielat, the chief executive of Endeavor Robotics, said OTAs are helpful in speeding the process.

"There's been this move to OTAs," he said. "There's a lot of good things about OTAs."

However, Bielat said robotics programs using OTAs have treated the products as commercial off-the-shelf efforts, even though they require development spending.

"We love the goal and the effort to speed these things up," Bielat said, but noted that it's required Endeavor to make substantial investments without the certainty of winning a contract.

George Batsakis, defense portfolio lead at Accenture Federal Services, told Inside Defense at the same conference "OTAs are changing the game."

"They kind of upside-down the procurement process," he added. "It'll be interesting to see how far they take this."