[music playing] [On Screen Text] At S&T Industry Partnerships We engage innovators to invent cutting-edge technology.
We advance the pace of development of innovative solutions and the commercial market. S&T's Office of Industry Partnerships OIP has the programs and tools
to work with you. Connect, Innovate, Partner, Commercialize, Deliver
this month on Insight Outreach. Engage with DHS and S&T
industry liaisons. [Music Ends] Connie: All right,
well, hello everyone, and thank you for joining
us today for the webinar. From the poll we had up on
screen just a minute ago, it looks like we had attendees
from around the country, and even a few
people internationally. So, thank you, everyone, for
joining us today for the second webinar in the Insights Outreach
series, hosted by the DHS Science and Technology
Office of Industry Partnerships. In this series, we want to help
you navigate S&T's partnership opportunities,
understand DHS mission needs, and identify paths to funding to
get the best Homeland Security solutions to market faster. We invite you to join us
every–the first Tuesday of every month for the webinar
series, and you can find a list of upcoming webinars on our
DHS S&T events page, which will be updated regularly.
Just a few housekeeping items. If you have any
questions or comments, please be sure to put
them in the Q&A chat box, and today you will be hearing
from three industry liaisons supporting the
Department of Homeland Security, who will discuss the
resources available to help you partner with DHS. With that, I will
introduce Dee Parker, the DHS S&T industry liaison. Dee, take it away. Dee Parker: Well,
hello and thank you Connie, for that wonderful introduction. I wanted to let everyone
know you're gonna be in for a great treat today. So, we have two DHS
industry liaisons, Ms. Eldridge from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, and Mr. Rick Gunderson from
Customs and Border Protection. So, let's go ahead
and get started.
Thank you, guys,
for joining today. So let's talk about what an
industry liaison really is all about in our core functions. So, we are the central
point of contact with industry. The entry point for industry. So, we're the gatekeepers. So, we're the ones that can
get you right into our DHS component, so that way you
can learn about our component mission and requirements. We foster relationships. Well, we know right now we're
not able to really get together in the room with one another. We really miss those days where
we can go to events and really talk to industry and our
external stakeholders and what's really going on in
our DHS components, and what mission needs we need. Well, we're doing
everything virtually, we had to change
things around a bit, but we seem to be really
navigating this in a great way.
So, we're here to work with
vendors and associations that seek to do business
with the department, and to link suppliers
with component stakeholders, and then facilitate
ongoing communication. Communication is key not only
with our external stakeholders but amongst the DHS
industry liaisons. We have to make sure that we
stay in touch with one another, we know what's going on in
those different components, and we share information and
feedback with one another. We just wanna make sure all the
lines of ongoing communication is open to our
external stakeholders, it's transparency
with efficiency, and we wanna make sure that
we're all on the same page.
A list of the DHS industry
liaisons can be found below, as you can see in this link. But what we're gonna do when
we get into the demo portion of this webinar, I will show
you exactly where you can find all of us. It's a great resource. So, let me just take you
back just a little bit. I just wanna step back just a
bit, because I want you to understand what and where a DHS
liaison has come from. So first, we have to go
to the DHS headquarters, Office of the Chief Procurement
Officers industry liaisons.
In our chain of command, the
headquarter IL's and that office are considered the
mothership, so to speak, the primary vessel here. And the DHS component industry
liaisons are the daughters, or the smaller ships of that
industry liaison hierarchy. So, OCPO launched the
Acquisition Innovations in Motion program, the acronym for
that is AIM, back in 2015. The goals of the AIM program
are to shorten the time toward contracts, increase the
probability of successful outcomes, and
create opportunities for non-traditional vendors to
compete with DHS business. The AIM program
includes four main activities: the Strategic
Industry Conversation, Reverse Industry day and
Micro-reverse Industry Day, and the Acquisition
Innovation Roundtable. And actually, a lot of
our industry liaisons have participated in many of these,
or not all of these events at the headquarters level. And not only that, those events
bring on hundreds of external stakeholders, and it's a great
way for all of us to understand what's going on
with one another and with our external
stakeholders. And the fourth is the
Procurement Innovation Lab, which is called the PIL,
which is executed by a separate OCPO division.
So, as I said before, their
office has this list of all DHS industry
liaisons, with FEMA, CBP, those are the two
industry liaisons we have today, CWMD, SISA, TSA,
the list goes on. And so, this is a great
resource that we have, because we can connect external
stakeholders with any component to get prompt responses and have
them discuss their technologies with subject matter experts. So, I just wanna get into
a little bit of what's the similarities and the
differences between S&T, FEMA, and CBP, as well as just
industry liaisons as a whole? So, what I wanna do first,
I wanna give you some quick background on me as an industry
liaison with the Science and Technology Directorate. So, so you understand, S&T is a
research, development, test, and evaluation arm of the Department
of Homeland Security. And it is our job to ensure
the department has solutions of today and tomorrow
to secure our nation. S&T has many ways to work with
industry on critical technology areas to include paths
geared toward startups and small companies, as well as
more traditional mechanisms.
Now, we talked about this in
great detail at our February 2 Insights Outreach Webinar, where
my director went through each and every one of those
funding opportunity tools. So, I won't get
into that right now, but when we go into our
demo portion of the webinar, I will show you exactly how to
get more information on those funding opportunities and where
you can go and click and sign up to see and learn more about
those funding opportunities. But if you want to really get
in contact and know exactly what S&T needs as an
industry liaison, what I'm looking for,
there are three things.
So, if there's a direct
applicability to current R&D needs, I would need the
following to connect you to the appropriate S&T representatives. So, number one, what
would I need from you? A brief description of your
capability or technology, and its intended applications
for Homeland Security. Number two, the current
technology readiness level, the TRL, and the
manufacturing readiness level, the MRL of the technology.
Any information that
demonstrates the uniqueness and value of the capability to DHS. So, those are the
three things I need. And what you can do, you can
send them directly to the S&T innovation inbox, and I'm sure
that information will be put into the chat, which is
S&T.innovation@HQ.DHS.gov. Send me your capabilities
sheet or your quad chart, even a paragraph. Just enough information with
those three top things that I've told you, so at least those S&T
program managers can review and see if that
technology is great for us. So, we're gonna go
right on into it. So, Ms. Eldridge, our FEMA
industry liaison, welcome again. Ms. Eldridge:
Thank you for having me. Dee: Thank you, so explain
your differences or similarities of your role as an
industry liaison at FEMA.
Ms. Eldridge: Thank you
so much, Ms. Parker, I appreciate the opportunity
to join you all today. So, as you can see on the
slide that's before you, there are some
similarities, but there is a little bit of a difference. So, in FEMA, the
industry liaison program, we serve as the single point
of entry for suppliers who are interested in doing
business with FEMA. We establish strategic
relationships with suppliers and stakeholders. We serve as an information
provider for suppliers seeking to do business with FEMA, and
we connect suppliers with our program offices in
support of FEMA's mission. But one of the differences that
helps us to stand out from some of the other industry liaison
programs as a component of the department is, we have what
we call the local business transition team,
and what that is, is that is a component of
the industry liaison program.
And with the
LBTT, what we do is, whenever there is a
disaster, the LBTT, or the local
business transition team, is deployed to the
joint field office. And what we do is, the LBTT
works in connection or in conjunction with the
industry liaison program and headquarters at FEMA. And the ILP helps to coordinate
the flow of vendor increase, of how to do business with FEMA
from headquarters to the LBTT. So, when vendors
reach out to us, and they want to
provide their capabilities, just as you stated
about filling out a form, we have one called the
FEMA vendor profile form.
They can send
that information in, and we can share that with
those that are responding to the disaster in the LBTT or the
local business transition team. We also provide additional
administrative and market research support as
requested by the LBTT. So, sometimes in a disaster,
some of those individuals may be looking for information,
and they may be looking for suppliers or resources where
they've exhausted all of their other market
research capabilities, and they'll reach back
out to us in headquarters, and say, "Hey, do you all have
any suppliers or vendors that have reached out that
have this capability?" And we can share that with them. Lastly, but not least, the
LBTT provides updates and field statuses to the
industry liaison program. So, what that means is
whatever's happening in the joint field office, and what
is happening on the ground, we may not have that information
in real time in headquarters while we're supporting
them, but they can report that information back to us.
So, that's one of the difference
that we provide from the industry liaison
program at FEMA. Thank you so much for asking. Dee: And so you know, I
don't think people really understand how big FEMA is. But can you just tell our
audience, you know, just how big FEMA really is and how many
regions there are, so they can understand how much work you
guys really do over there? Ms. Eldridge: Absolutely,
thank you again so much for asking. So, our workforce is
approximately 20,000 employees within FEMA, and we do
have ten regional offices. So, the work that we
do is vast and great. When I first started
working with FEMA, FEMA was a very
small organization, and it's been many years now,
and I'm grateful to still be with the organization to
help push the mission forward. But we have grown
since hurricane Katrina, and it caused us to
grow, and so we're grateful. So now, our workforce is
approximately 20,000 plus, and we have ten regional offices
in support of FEMA as a whole.
Dee: Thank you so
much, Ms. Eldridge. Ms. Eldridge:
You're most welcome. Dee: So Rick, you're up.
How are you doing today? Rick Gunderson: Good
morning, Dee, and thanks to S&T for asking CBP
to be a part of this. So, as Dee mentioned, the
importance of keeping an open dialogue with industry, that
starts at the top of the DHS procurement community with
the chief procurement officer.
You know, one of Ms. Correa's
priorities is that we're promoting meaningful
communications. And that means that, you
know, throughout the process, whether we're early
in the planning stage, getting ready to do
the solicitation, and even afterwards, that we're
keeping that dialog going with industry, so we can
understand capabilities, you can understand
mission and gaps. So, all those core functions
that Dee lists on that slide, we perform at CBP. We have a small team called
the Industry Partnership and Outreach Program, IPOP, which we
perform industry liaison role as well as small
business specialists roles.
So, it's kind of a dual
hat that we have at CBP. And we basically are kind
of that front door for CBP, as Dee described, where we can
understand your capabilities, connect with program offices
where we know the mission might have a match, not always,
but again, it's important that we have that network and share
information not just within CBP but across DHS through
our Industry Liaison Counsel. Now, in addition to these
core roles that we have, I also have the function of
Procurement Ombudsman and Competition Advocate at CBP. And as the Procurement
Ombudsman, I am that independent objective
official that industry can come to with their concerns. Sometimes it might be a
proposed strategy that CBP has to carry out an acquisition. Industry can reach out to
me, express that concern, or it can even be
post-award that, you know, we already have a
contract in place with the vendor, the vendor doesn't feel
that things are being treated fairly, so again, I'm a point of
contact that can be reached and understand what that concern is,
and then I can engage with the appropriate stakeholders
and hopefully reach a good resolution for all.
So, yes we perform the
functions described there, but we also have a couple of
other things under our umbrella. Dee: And I know
that CBP is, you know, you deal with so many
different topics and issues. It's just a, you know, huge,
huge, huge component. But can you share with our
audience maybe those top three things that you see a lot that
maybe comes into your shared inbox, your external inbox? Rick: Yeah, from an acquisition
portfolio, we do have a very diverse set of missions and
hence–and you know, we spend about $5 billion
a year in support of the different missions.
You know, we basically have
four different operators that are carrying
out the mission. We have the Border Patrol,
those are the green suits that work between the ports of entry;
we have our Field Operations, the blue suits that you're gonna
see if you're coming in through an official port of entry. Our Office of Air Marine who's
supporting from above and in the waterways along with the Border
Patrol in securing the borders. Then we also have
the Office of Trade. So, you know, our mission is
not just securing the border, but we're also facilitating
lawful trade and travel, so that's a key
component of the CBP mission. So, as far as, you
know, what we're buying, there's a lot of information
technology, a lot of security technology that's
deployed along the border. But we also have just general
services that are supporting the day-to-day operation, and then
the commodities that are keeping the lights on and
keeping the boots moving. So, it's extremely
diverse and, you know, we can share some of that
information separately with some more details.
But there's lots of
opportunities out there and we're always looking
for new partnerships. Dee: Thank you so much, Rick. And I just wanted to let
everyone know that we will have this webinar available
and posted on our website, our Insights Outreach webpage. So, just in case
anyone is wondering, it will be there and be posted. So, I think we have another
poll that's coming up here. So, our second poll question. I know how and where to
engage with DHS about my technologies or services. Let's see if anyone knows
how to get in contact with us. How to engage. Okay, so some
answers are coming in. So, we have yes, a
little too confusing, and just learning
through the webinar. So, this is great. So, this portion that's
coming up is our demo portion, so you guys can take a
look at our websites, how to get in contact
with us, how to engage. We wanna make it
really easy for you. So, we're gonna go
first, I'm gonna go first, actually, and
pull up S&T's site. So, we're going to
navigate through this.
And so, this is gonna be great,
because our Office of Industry Partnership's
Communications team, they've worked really hard on
our website to make it user friendly for you guys and
to get right to the point. So, right here, as you
can see, working with S&T, and if you go down
just a little bit, you'll see that–look, new, work
with S&T on more information on COVID-19 and how
to work with us.
And look what you
see, http://www.FEMA.gov. So, we work very
closely with FEMA, so with Ms.
Eldridge and those IL's. And then how to work with S&T. So, right here, this is new,
our DHS industry outreach form. So, this is a great
thing right here. We just put this on our website
within the last few days. And so, what it does, it allows
external stakeholders to tell us about your technologies and
receive news and updates from S&T about our opportunities. So, I think we actually got a
few of these filled out forms directly to us over
the last few days.
So, if you filled this
form out right here, we will collect your
information, and then we will send you updates and
opportunities that S&T has. So, this is
something new we have, and it's actually
working out pretty well. So, I wanna go right into
our S&T funding opportunities. And so, this is what I actually
talked about at our last February 2 Insights
Outreach with my director of office of industry
partnerships. So, it gives you a really
in-depth look of all of our funding opportunities, whether
it's the Long-range Broad Announce Agent, the
Prize Competition, we have a Silicon
Valley Innovation Program, our Small Business
SBRR Program, the BIRD, I mean , everything is
right here at your fingertips, and all you have to do
is click on the link, and you'll get all the
information you need. Not only that, it'll tell you
if you're a small company or startup, if you're a
medium-sized company, what would be the best fit
for you and your company. And it's just easy
as a click away. And then, a connection
with these funding opportunities is
our industry guide. And so, you see as you
go down to our resources, you click on S&T
Industry Guide right here, and then you'll see
everything you need right here.
And so, it gives a thorough
overview of S&T's R&D investment priorities and
business opportunities, so it'll show you everything you
need to know and the priorities that we are looking for here at
DHS, and what technologies. And like I said
before, even on our website, this will also tell you if your
company is what's best for which tool, so it's a great resource. And I actually used it a lot
when I was going out and about to events and the conferences.
I mean, I had this
guide in my back pocket, and everyone loved it. I mean, they just flew right
off our tables here at S&T. So, it's a great
resource for everyone to use. And the next, which I promised
to you, is our Office of the Chief Procurement Officers
industry liaison list. So, it just gives you a quick
overview of the AIM events that I talked about, and then if you
click on our industry liaisons point of contacts,
you'll see everyone is there, all of the DHS components.
And they are a great resource,
and they will get back to you if you respond to them to tell them
about your technologies or any information you need when it
comes to that DHS component. So, I hope this really helped
you out so you can see all the wonderful things that
S&T is doing in addition to our industry liaisons. So, up next we
have Ms. Eldridge. Can you please share your screen
to show your FEMA website? Ms. Eldridge: Yes, I can, Ms.
Parker, thank you so much. Give me one moment, I am
trying to share my screen now. Dee: Okay, and
so Ms. Eldridge, she will give you guys
doing business with FEMA, an overview of their
website, and she'll take about, you know, five to six minutes
to give you an overview of what you should hone in on. Take it away. Ms. Eldridge: Thank you so much,
Ms. Parker, I appreciate it. So, here you see our website. So, at the top, here's
the link to get to our website, or the URL.
So, if you're on and outfacing
page and you don't know how to find us, you can go to Google. Google is a very
popular search engine, and you can type
in http://www.FEMA.gov, and then you would just look for
"Doing business with FEMA," as you see me moving my mouse here. So, I'm gonna move right along. So, on our website, I'm gonna
talk to you today very briefly about how to do business
with FEMA in four steps. So, as you can
see, step number one, or the first one here on the
website is talk to your local Association of Procurement
Technical Assistant Centers. And that's the APTAC. Some people may know
the APTAC as the P-TAC, or you may have heard the
acronym P-TAC being used, but it's the same organization. The organization is a
wonderful organization. They are a wealth
of information. They can help you and aid you
with a lot of services when you're interested in
doing business with the federal government.
A lot of their services are
free or can be offered for a very nominal fee. If you're new to doing business
with government and you've never done business, and you wanna
know how do I get started, what does
that look like? They can help you register
your business in the System for Award Management. They also offer
training courses. If you're a small
business, medium business, large business, it
really doesn't matter, but they can help you. But if you go to our webpage
and you don't remember how to get there or remember their
name, there's a link here that you see me kind of
rubbing my mouse over.
You can just click on
that link and it will take you directly
to their webpage. It will let you know that you
are exiting a federal government entity and you're
going to another website. The second step is to
register in the System for Award Management, which you may
have heard some people refer to as SAM.gov. There may be some that are
currently participating in this webinar today that
may be registered, but there may be new companies
that have never registered in the System for Award Management. So, in order to do business
with the federal government, you have to be registered in
the System for Award Management, which is SAM.gov. So, before you register in SAM,
we recommend that you obtain your D-U-N-S number, and
you would get that from Dun & Bradstreet, and again,
if you don't remember, you can come to our page, and
where you see me moving my mouse here, that's to the Dun
& Bradstreet website, and you would just click
there, and it would take you directly to their site.
The next thing you would need
to do is to obtain your tax identification number, and that
tax identification number is issued through the, excuse me,
Internal Revenue Service. So, you would go to http://www.IRS.gov. However, if you don't
remember their website, it's okay, it's right here on
our page where you see me moving my mouse here, and you
can just click there. And so, once you obtain your
D-U-N-S number and your tax identification number, you'll be
ready to register in the System for Award Management if
you're new to registering. One of the caveats that I wanna
put in place for you today is that whenever you register in
the System for Award Management, you wanna make sure that
whatever information you've placed in the system for Dun
& Bradstreet and the IRS is exactly the same in the
System for Award Management.
What happens in the
System for Award Management, or SAM.gov, is your
information is gonna go through a verification process. So, if you are, let's say for
instance you're ABC Company, and so, when you register in Dun
& Bradstreet to get your D-U-N-S number, you
register as ABC Company. And then when you go to get
your tax identification number, you register as ABC Company. But then, when it comes to the
System for Award Management, you say, "Ah, I
forgot to put the LLC, so let me put ABC Company, LLC. Well, that can pose
a bit of a problem because when they
go to look for you, they're gonna be looking for
the same exact name that your company is registered under.
So, if it's not the same, it
can stop the verification process or slow it down. So, we just encourage suppliers
and vendors to remember when you are registering your company in
the System for Award Management, please make sure that your
information is the same. The other thing that I
wanna reference here is the Disaster Response Registry. And that Disaster Response
Registry is housed in the System for Award Management. And what that does is, that
allows contracting officers and/or specialists who are
looking for companies during a disaster who have goods and
services to be able to do some market research and search for
those companies at a fingertip. And so, if you're new to the
system and you want your company to be visible on the
Disaster Response Registry and you can click the link here, what you would do is, when you
go into the System for Award Management, or SAM.gov to
set up your registration, you wanna click the box to
identify that your company–you want your company to
be on that registry. But please note that your
company will not be visible until your registration has
been completed and is active.
So, if you're still going
through the registration process, you may not
see your company yet, but when you receive
notification that your company is active, your company
should be viewable on the Disaster
Response Registry. Now, there may be some on the
line who have already registered in SAM and they're not sure if
their company is there, or they may be interested in getting
their company put on the list. So what you can do is contact
the Federal Service Desk, and they are the desk that
supports the System for Award Management, and beta.SAM.gov,
and their website is http://www.FSD.gov, and you can talk
with someone either by phone or you can do a live chat, and
they can tell you or walk you through what you would need to
do to add your company to the registry if they're not there.
So I wanted to make sure
that I referenced that, but again, that Disaster
Response Registry is important, because our contracting officers
and specialists do look at that list, and when they're
looking for companies, they can identify you there. Number three, step number
three is understanding FEMA's mission and goals. I'm not gonna go through this in
its entirety because it's a lot of information, but here
you can see FEMA's mission. So if you wanna learn
more about FEMA's mission, you can click on
this hyperlink here. But as you can see, and it
says it right in front of you, FEMA's mission is to
help people before, during, and after disasters,
and that's the key here. We just want you to know
that that is our mission, to help people before,
during, and after disasters. And if your company has goods
and services that are useful in the situations described below,
then you can proceed here. You'll see something that says
the Emergency Support Functions, and you'll see it says those
Emergency Support Functions, or ESF's, may be selectively
activated for both Stafford Act and Non-Stafford Act incidents.
So, what that in
essence means is, we have our federal agencies,
and each one of those federal agencies have a part to play,
and they help to support us. So, with that being said,
if you click on this list, and I won't click–I
mean, the hyperlink, excuse me, and I won't
click on it at this moment, but you can check it
out at your leisure. You'll be able to see which
agency is the lead agency, and what their function is. So it's very
helpful to understand, you know, kind of
who leads what, what effort during an emergency,
so that as you're looking for opportunities, you'll understand
which agency has the lead.
Also, you'll see here
where you see my mouse moving, the State Emergency
Management Agencies. And those are the places that
you wanna get in contact with when you're looking to find
out, let's say for instance a disaster happens and
you wanna do business, however the state may not
have requested assistance from the federal government. They may feel as though
that they can handle the disaster themselves. But you don't know how to
reach out to the state. How do you find out what
their opportunities are? If you don't know
how to reach them, you can come to our page
here and click on this link, and it will give you the name of
the State Emergency Management Agencies and how
you can contact them. And then, as a frame of
reference here, you have the National Response Framework,
and it's a guide on how the nation responds to all types of
disasters and emergency. It's a good piece of
resource information, and we encourage
you to monitor that.
And then, as you can see here,
and I'm gonna be wrapping it up fairly quickly, you see
the Top Commodities Procured for Disasters. These are not the
only commodities, these are just some
of those commodities. But these are some of those
commodities that are procured during a disaster,
some of those top things, those things that are
needed in almost every disaster. However, if you're looking for
any information, or you wanna request some information, you
see this link here that talks about the FEMA
Industry Liaison Program? You can put–you can send us a
message and put this subject in here, and we can send you
additional information that is relative to the koozie, and it
will include information about some of these top
commodities procured. And then, step number
four, Monitoring Contracting Opportunity Sites. And this one is very important. We get a lot of individuals who
are looking for opportunities to do business with FEMA.
And as I said, we do have
some of our federal partners, so we encourage you all
to look at not just FEMA but our other federal partners. But the contracting
opportunities are listed on the beta.SAM.gov website. All of those
opportunities above $25,000, those are listed there. So we encourage you to
monitor that website. You may wanna monitor that
website on a daily basis several times a day because
the needs could change hourly.
They could change daily. They could just
be ever-evolving. If we're in the middle
of a major disaster, things could be
posted very quickly. So we wanna encourage
you to make sure you're monitoring this site. And then we have
Unison Marketplace, and it's a fully-managed
online marketplace, and that's where some of the
smaller purchases are located, such as copiers,
office supplies, printer paper, and
things of that nature. So when you're
looking, if your company, you can provide some
of those resources, monitor Unison
Marketplace as well. And then we have the Department
of Homeland Security Acquisition Planning Forecasting System. And that is a portal for small
business vendors who want to view anticipated contract
actions about $250,000. So as you can see, this
is not our entire website, but these are some of the
key points and those one, two, three, four, those are the
four steps that we share with suppliers when they're
interested in learning to do business with FEMA, but we
have additional resources. There's also some information
at the bottom that tells you if you're looking to let us
know who you are and give us a snapshot, we have what we call the
FEMA Vendor Profile Form.
And you can locate
that information down here at the bottom. You'll see it says complete
the Vendor Profile Form. You can click on that to access,
and you would email it back to us at our contact information. But that allows us to know your
purpose for contacting FEMA if you're interested in potentially
trying to request a meeting. We cannot guarantee
meetings, but we can share that information, and we can send
it to the program offices, but the meetings are at the
discretion of our contracting staff and as appropriate. And so, if they feel the
need or if there is a need or if they want
to meet with you, they'll let us know and
we'll get that scheduled. So, I wanted to
share that with you. Dee: That is awesome.
That's an awesome thing. Ms. Eldridge: And we're
gonna turn it back over to Ms.
Parker now,
thank you so much. Dee: That is some great–I
wanted to just say as you were talking, that is some
awesome information that you are sharing, and I know industry
is really happy about that. But we're gonna go
straight to CBP. We're gonna pull up those
slides, and Rick, take it away. Rick: Thanks, Dee, and
great job, Ms. Eldridge. Yeah, there's some really
good information there. I'm sure the
audience we have today, there are some companies out
there that are–have worked with government for a long time,
but there's also others out there that are maybe
trying to break in, and some good
fundamental information there, and I would just encourage, if
there are companies out there that are new to the
government arena looking to find, you know, what's the best
way to look for opportunities and things like that, later on
in the presentation you'll see some email addresses,
at least for CBP.
If you reach out to us,
we can set up phone calls. Our specialists can walk you
through different systems out there and how to search under
certain NAICS Codes and other, you know, functions like
that that you can hone in on where your best
opportunities might be. So, if you go to
the CBP.gov website, and you have to do
a little searching. It's not–I guess if you type in
the words "how to do business with CBP," it will get you
there, but it's not that intuitive on the front page,
unfortunately. But if you go there,
you'll get these links, and these are kind of
the standard links, and obviously
we're a little outdated. We're still showing FedBizOpps
where we should be having the beta.SAM website up there. But you'll get redirected there. But there's also a couple other
sub-links there that–for within CBP, if you're interested in
submitting unsolicited proposals or wanna learn more about
our small business program.
I mean, those are the standard
things where you can find information about
upcoming opportunities. Ms. Eldridge also
mentioned the DHS APFS, the Acquisition
Planning Forecast System. That's a good
source of upcoming. It's not always
the most current, but we are trying to
do better at that. A couple things that we are
trying to do at CBP that are–that's a work in process,
we've created a draft notable contract–or notable
procurement spreadsheet. So this is supposed to
identify what are those, what I call notable, or key
upcoming procurements in the next 12 to 18 months
that we wanna give a head's up to industry on. It's not gonna necessarily
have all the plan strategies, some of those are
still in development, but it's our hope that
within the next month or so, we'll be able to post that
either through our website or send it out through beta.SAM,
so industry can have a list of maybe 25 to 30 notable
upcoming procurements. So that's one thing
that we are working on.
We're also in the
planning stages of setting up a bi-monthly, every other
month industry outreach, similar to what's
going on here today. Also, some of you might be
familiar with what USCIS is doing in that arena. But the idea is that we would
pick a particular mission area, program area in CBP and try to
have an hour session where we can share current state,
maybe identify some gap areas, and again, start that dialog and
maybe, you know, hopefully come up with some good
solutions down the line.
So as I mentioned
before, you know, the portfolio that we
have at CBP is very diverse. We do rely on a lot of
commercial technologies, non-developmental, but that
doesn't mean we aren't searching for some cutting-edge areas. So if you'd please
go to the next slide, I did want to highlight one of
those offices that's kind of a key player at CBP. It's what's referred to
as the Innovation Team, or as an acronym, INVNT. So this is another website
that's available to provide some high-level information on
what their focus areas are. Now, the innovation team was
stood up about two years ago under the office
of Commissioner, and they are basically charged
with trying to find some new technologies that can
enhance our capabilities, fill some gaps, and also do it
in a way that we can get it done and fielded quickly.
So the Innovation Team, they
have partnered with S&T through the Silicon Valley
Innovation Program, and also they've
worked with DOD, and the intelligence
community In-Q-Tel, and you know, they've come up
with some really good solutions so far that we wouldn't have
found through the traditional contracting methods,
through the FAR. So they've used
other transactions and things like that. We've also used what's called
the Commercial Solutions Opening Program, CSOP, section 880. Sorry for all these
acronyms and things like that, but that provides an alternative
procurement authority that we've done at CBP to look for
solutions that are already developed, ready to be released,
and it's done outside the FAR. We've also leveraged the Small
Business Innovation Research Program phase–all the way up to
phase III where we're looking across the government where
there's already a phase I or phase II program that's going
well and tapping into that. We have the authority to use
another department's SBIR program if it's
ready for phase III.
So again, you know, this is kind
of just a high-level overview of what that innovation team
has been looking at so far, but as, you know, if we get
information from vendors talking about something that's kind
of out of our normal arena, we certainly refer it over
to this team to see if it's something that they, you
know, wanna keep tabs on, engage with the
vendor, and you know, see if it's something we
wanna go further with. So a lot of commercial
non-developmental that we already do at CBP, but we're
also looking at the cutting-edge stuff that, you
know, S&T helps promote, but also working directly with
industry, thank you.
Dee: Thank you, Rick. That was a wealth
of information, and what makes this so great
is that everybody can just go straight to the websites and
find out even more information that you guys
already described today. So as you can see, this
slide is Connect With Us, so it's just giving everyone our
information on how you can get in contact with us, with CBP,
with FEMA, and S&T. And so, while this is
up, you know, it's just great, you know, having both of
you guys here today. And I think that our external
stakeholders are really getting just an in-depth glimpse of all
the wonderful things that we do here at DHS and how we are
staying focused on our mission.
And you know, just letting them
know that we really work hard together as a team,
as industry liaisons. And you know, over the last
six months with this COVID-19 crisis, we really had to just
really jump into gear and work with one another as
industry liaisons, and I know that our
headquarter's industry liaisons, they really just
jumped right into it, and we all had a meeting to
determine what we can do to alleviate all of the questions
and all of the–that was coming through our innovation inbox,
and we worked together as a team to make sure that these things
happened, but a lot of those inquires came to FEMA. And so, I know you guys had to
filter out so many requests and inquires that came
into your inboxes.
Can you just
explain a little bit, Ms. Eldridge, on your take on
this COVID-19 crisis and how we all worked together as one? Ms. Eldridge: Yes, I can, Ms.
Parker, thank you again so much. So as you indicated, there was
a lot of information that came through FEMA as it
related to–or as it related to COVID-19, and we're still
getting inquires that come in regarding COVID-19. So there were individuals who
wanted to offer their services, whether it was a company
that could provide 10,000 masks or 300. Whether they were companies that
had access to hand sanitizer, wipes, and things
of that nature. But the good thing was
is that we were able to, as you stated earlier, we
were able to work together as a whole, as a team, the industry
liaisons within the department. We were able to
share information. We were able to reach out to
each one of the components to find out, you know, have you
all received this information? You know, are you all
looking for individuals that can provide PPE? Who do we sent this to?
Who do we connect with? So it was phenomenal, and it
continues to be phenomenal.
And the good thing is, is
that the partnership started, you know, when the Industry
Liaison Counsel was formed, long before COVID-19 happened. And so, having one another
as partners has served to be just beneficial. And so, you know, we're
gonna continue beyond COVID. We were doing this before COVID,
we're gonna continue through COVID, and moving forward. And as much as we need to
be there for one another, we're gonna be there. So thank you so much
for asking the question. Dee: And Rick,
what are your thoughts? Do you have any final thoughts,
you know, even with the COVID-19 crisis, or just with
this webinar as a whole? Do you have any final thoughts
that you would like to share with our audience
before we go to Q&A? Rick: I think, with
respect to the COVID, I think the department
did a good job in trying to, consolidate's not the right
word, but to streamline how the department was gonna
respond and work with industry.
'Cause I can–you know, from a
CBP perspective, you know, certainly back
last spring and last summer, we were getting multiple emails
a day with people who said they had masks, or you know, all
these different commodities. And it really didn't make
sense for eight to ten different buying organizations
and DHS to deal with everything individually. It made sense to try to bring
this together as one community, so by DHS kind of doing that and
working with FEMA to try to do things at a more enterprise
level, I think was effective.
Because not only were we trying
to meet the mission and carry out what we need to do, but
we're also trying to do it in a sound business
way, and you know, trying to–not that we're
trying to do it on the cheap, but we don't wanna waste money. So I think it was an important
thing for the department to do it as a community. Dee: Thank you so
much, and I just wanna say once again,
I wanna thank both of you guys for being and
participating in this webinar.
This is our second one,
so it's very exciting to have you guys here. I'm gonna turn it over to
Connie, so she can look in the chat and see what questions
she has for all three of us. Connie, over to you. Connie: Thanks, Dee,
yeah, we actually have a lot of questions. So, a couple of things here. If you do have a
question for us, please put it in
the Q&A chat box. If we are not able to get
to your question today, please send us an email at
SandT.Innovation@hq.dhs.gov. You can see it's in the
lower right-hand corner of the screen right there. So with that, I will just
go ahead and jump right in. Our first question
today is for FEMA. So, seeing that FEMA needs to
be prepared for when disasters strike, do you maintain any
type of advanced contracts? If so, is the
information for these contracts available to view? Ms. Eldridge: Yes, Connie,
thank you so much for asking. So there is, on our website, on
the Doing Business with FEMA website, there's something
called Advanced Contracting for Goods and Services.
To some, they may be known
as Pre-Position Contracts. That may have been terminology
that was used at some time, you know, out in
the supplier world, contracting world, but they're
now called Advanced Contracting for Goods and Services. And so, that information is
available on the Doing Business with FEMA website. You can find it there,
the website that I've referenced in my presentation. If you scroll down, I
believe it's under Resources, and you'll be able to find it,
but I just wanna reference that in FY2021, FEMA currently has
89 Advanced Contracts in 46 Mission-essential Areas,
and when you go there, you can see the
description and the awardee.
So, you won't see a
specific person's name, but you'll see the
company that was awarded. But that information
is there and it's public and is readily
available for viewing. Thank you so much for asking. Connie: Okay,
absolutely, all right. So this next question is
for CBP and S&T as well. So, how does CBP work with
S&T on development of new technologies
related to its mission? Rick: Sure, so CBP and most
of the components across DHS, we don't have R&D
money ourselves, you know, and DOD, a lot
of the buying agencies, they do have their
own R&D, but you know, at DHS and CBP, we rely on
S&T for that development arm for future technologies. So the
coordination that goes on, I would say there's one
primary way and a secondary way. The primary one is each year, at
least once, maybe twice a year, S&T, they will do outreach to
the various DHS components, such as CBP and FEMA. And they're gonna ask them
basically what is it that you want us to be focusing on? Where are you seeing challenges? Where are your gaps? You know, so it's like, okay,
if we're gonna spend this R&D money, we wanna put it
towards the areas we know that it's needed.
So there's a back and forth,
a communication between the components and S&T on
what those needs are. And then, additionally, kind of
a secondary role that we have at CBP is, we have an S&T liaison
that resides in the Office of Acquisition at CBP. So that person is kind of a
boots-on-the-ground or they have kind of the ears
right on site with CBP. So though they're participating
in meetings between the Chief Acquisition Executive and
programs, and hearing where these challenges are,
it's much easier to pick up on that information and
to be able to share it.
And they're also able to take
information they're getting from S&T and make sure
it's communicated appropriately across CBP. So we kind of have a strategic
network going on that happens once or twice a year. We also have that tactical,
day-to-day communication and liaison that we have
within the office. Connie: Okay, all right,
thank you so much for that. And then, Dee, the next
question goes to you. So, this is in reference to
the DHS Industry Outreach Form. So the question is, what happens
to the information in the form after an organization
or a person submits it? Dee: So once we receive
the information from the form, we have a team here. And so, once we accept
it from the website, we take that information so that
we can add it to our mailing list and to our database.
That way we have those specific
opportunities on those R&D needs, and we can reach out to
those companies that work with those technology capabilities,
so that way we can get in contact with you guys, whether
we're having any events or any information that's going
on with S&T, or if we see that there is a technology
capability within S&T. We can pull your company and
they can take a look at your capabilities that you have
given to us in the information, and then that way you'll be
in that database for us to reach out to you. Connie: Okay, thank you. And then, this next question
actually goes to any one of our incredibly
knowledgeable industry liaisons. So, can any of you answer
the question is there a small business liaison or a small
disadvantaged veteran-owned or women-owned or
HUD's-owned businesses? Ms. Eldridge: I
can answer that. This is Ms. Eldridge from FEMA. So, I believe each component
has a small-business specialist, but I know in FEMA we do. His name is Mr. Keegan, and his
information is also available on the Doing Business website.
So each component should have
a small-business specialist, or at least a small-business
office that any individual who is a small business can reach
out to to obtain additional information on how to
do business with that respective component. Or if you're looking at the
department level, on how you can do business at the department
level as well, thank you.
Rick: Yeah, and I'll
just add on to Ms. Eldridge. So, each component does have
that small business contact, but in addition, at the
Department, in the Chief Procurement Office, they have
the OSDBU, Office of Small Business Disadvantaged
Business Utilization Office, and they have a team of a
half a dozen or so individuals, and each of them
have a particular, what's the word I
wanna use, not category, but someone will be kind of the
HUBZone point of contact or the service disabled
veteran-owned point of contact. So if you have a
particular designation, there are some
people out there that, you know, might be able to
provide you some advice from that perspective
at the department.
Dee: And I just wanted
to chime in to say I think, you know, in the
beginning of the webinar, we showed you the OCPO website,
so that should be in the chat if you want to go and
check out those resources. Connie: Okay, and
then thank you all so much. And then we only have time
for one more question today.
We've had a number of
great questions in here. So, but Dee, we've had a number
of questions come in regarding how organizations can find
out which of S&T's innovation programs fund technology and the
varying levels of technology or manufacturing-readiness levels. The question is more towards the
life cycle of those programs, including the funding limits. Can you reiterate the resources
that are available to help people learn about S&T's
innovation funding programs? Dee: Yes, when we showed in
our demo the Industry Guide, that's a wealth of information
on where your company would fit with the TRL levels,
whether high or low. And then, in addition to that,
go to our website to see all of the different funding tools,
funding opportunities that we have, and it lists all of the
funding opportunities that we have, and when
you click in there, you'll get that information
right there on the spot. Connie: Okay, and then that
looks like all the questions that we have time for today.
Dee, any final
thoughts from you? Dee: Just wanna reiterate
that this has been an exciting, hands-on workshop of–feel type
of industry outreach webinar. So, I wanna thank all the
participants who logged on today, and I also wanna thank
Ms. Eldridge and Rick Gunderson for their participation here. This is the first time
we've ever showcased industry liaisons, I think, in S&T just
in general, so this is a first. So, we are the first. And so, I wanna thank you guys
for just participating today. That's all I have, Connie.
Connie: All right, so
thank you so much, Dee. Thank you so much to
our other participants. We want to especially thank
everyone for joining us today. We know that you've all been
given some great resources, and as a reminder, if you do
have any followup questions, please be sure to
send us an email at the SandT.Innovation@hq.dhs.gov
email. That should be in the chat. And we invite you to joint us
next month as we discuss the long-range broad
agency announcement, and go into more
detail on that program. So, you can find more
information about that on our S&T events page. We look forward to seeing
you next month, thanks everyone. [music playing] .
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