Rosettex and NTA

The National Technology Alliance (NTA)

The NTA was originally established in 1987 as an intelligence Community (IC) initiative to foster relationships with critical commercial technology sectors, reduce the barriers that inhibit commercial firms from working directly with Government, and motivate them to address IC problems by considering community needs in new product development. The NTA identified solutions to critical national technology challenges where the cost of development could be shared with the larger commercial marketplace, and had a history of money-saving accomplishments through partnerships with industry and academic institutions. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) was the Executive Agent for the NTA Program, chartered to execute the program on behalf of the IC, Department of Defense (DoD), and other Government agencies.

New Times Demanded New Approaches

In 2002, the trend toward commercial leadership in information and applications technology, microelectronics, and other important technology areas had accelerated rapidly. The emphasis on reducing mission-critical technology "time-to-market" intensified the need for broader and deeper access for the Defense REsearch and Development (R&D) Community into our nation's commercial technology base. In contrast, the organizations that historically provided advancements and new technologies to the Intelligence and Defense Communities consolidated significantly. The primary focus of the the fewer conglomerates that remained was the application of military-specific technology and, to a much lesser extent, commercial technology to military systems. As the defense supply base for this technology shrank and the Intelligence Community (IC) experienced greater budget pressures, it became increasingly important to imprive the ability and incentive for commercial companies to support the IC. Understanding this problem, Government executives made the case for greater exploitation of commercial technologies, processes, and products to ensure that their limited R&D resources yielded maximum mission impact and return on investment. They challenged the IC to find ways to more aggressively leverage and exploit the very best technologies emerging from the commercial marketplace at affordable prices.

World Class Partners

In response to this challenge, NGA awarded a procurement agreement in February 2002 to the Rosettex Technology & Ventures Group, a joint venture formed by Sarnoff Corporation (Princeton, NJ) and SRI International (Menlo Park, CA) to address user technology needs in Geospatial Intelligence (GI), Information Processing, Analysis and Management (IPAM), and Digital Technology Infrastructure (DTI). Rosettex assembled a team that eventually consisted of over 100 leading research universities, institutes, laboratories, and commercial companies, with facilities in 34 states, to support the NTA.

Unique Development Processes

The goal of projects executed by the NTA was to identify optimum solutions to Government technology challenges by directly engaging commercial industry. The NTA offered its Government clients access to the Rosettex business model with all the elements required to make this happen, namely: a contract mechanism designed for rapid procurement actions, an organizational structure designed to streamline management, a team with clearly defined roles to exploit their expertise, and an experienced management team ready and able to work in close cooperation with its Government clients and industry partners to facilitate access to best-of-class resources and provide independent project oversight. By design, the NTA encouraged cross-department and cross-agency cooperation. The NTA, through Rosettex, offered a unique approach to R&D encompassing two discrete processes:

• The first, Independent Assessment and Evaluation (IA&E), analyzed users' needs and identified the best solutions to meet those needs. NTA partner companies, experts on the organization, missions, operations, and requirements of the communities they served, identified needs and provided the essential analysis and outreach to Government users of information technology. Other technology and market assessment experts compared potential solutions to the identified needs, and proposed best-of-class solutions and suppliers. The independence of the user needs and technology experts ensured that competitive business pressures had reduced influence on recommended program decisions. These partners did not participate in product design or development, or in systems integration, except in rare cases involving exquisite technology areas.

• The second process encompassed prototyping, product development, commercialization, technology insertion, and systems integration. Teammates that conducted these processes were separated from the needs and solutions identification process by a procedural conflict of interest firewall. This ensured that natural bias for one's own products or business sales pressures did not affect a best-of-class decission.

Summary

During its twenty-two years of existence, the NTA accumulated a rich history of solving user needs across organizational boundaries. Its unique position provided its clients rapid access to advanced technology resources - both in academia and industry - to address mission-critical technology development needs. From February 2002 to September 2009, Rosettex offered the NTA a trusted resource with an innovative business model to tackle difficult and complex problems, make breakthrough advances, and transition revolutionary solutions to broad spectrum of technology needs.