The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) wants to cut costs and boost efficiency by launching a new Commercial Data Consortium that will give the intelligence community (IC) easier, unified access to commercial data.
In a recent solicitation published on April 8 to SAM.gov, IARPA explained that the IC has a “commercial data acquisition duplication problem and a costly commercial data replication and storage problem.”
Interested vendors have until April 28 to respond.
The IC’s fragmented approach to acquiring Commercially Available Information (CAI) has led to siloed purchases, redundant data buys, and limited data sharing. Attempts to fix the issue have often resulted in costly enterprise licenses that see little use. To fix this problem, IARPA is seeking to establish a contract for an IC Data Consortium to reduce duplicative data and license spending.
“[IARPA] seeks a centralized approach to access [Commercially Available Information] via three primary options – API query, platform access, and bulk data access – from commercial vendors by establishing a government-funded Data Consortium,” the solicitation notice reads.
The consortium will act as a central hub for managing the IC’s commercial data needs – serving as a single point of contact for vendor negotiations, ensuring compliance with both IC policies and data providers’ terms, and allowing agencies to pool funds to reduce costs and expand access to high-value commercial datasets.
According to the notice, IARPA seeks a “zero copy” technical solution that “prevents duplicative data purchases and reduces data replication and other cloud costs by keeping the data in place on the vendor’s IT to the maximum extent possible.”
The notice also states that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Open-Source Intelligence Executive will serve as the program manager for the consortium, overseeing the contract with the Consortium Manager and the development of the interface. The Consortium Manager will handle consolidated commercial data requests from government representatives and work with consortium vendors to secure the most suitable data at the best value for the government.