The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency published a Broad Agency Announcement  July 6, offering an updated mechanism for researchers in industry and academia to support the agency’s mission and tackle difficult geospatial-intelligence problems.

The Boosting Innovative GEOINT Research BAA, known as the BIG-R BAA, enables NGA to adopt phased approaches and use multiple contract instruments to target expertise, mitigate risk and create an innovative environment for developing disruptive capabilities.

“The release of this BAA will help accelerate our research endeavors and provide NGA with the ability to expand and diversify its research performer base, while giving us better flexibility and agility in research contracting efforts," said Cindy Daniell, PhD, NGA director of research.

BAAs are a general announcement of an agency’s research interest including criteria for selecting proposals and soliciting the participation of all offerors capable of satisfying the government’s needs. BAAs may be used by agencies to fulfill their requirements for scientific study and experimentation directed toward increasing knowledge or understanding, rather than focusing on a specific system or hardware solution.

Technical advances developed under the BIG-R BAA will enable the delivery of future GEOINT capabilities to users for operational impact aimed at solving challenging defense and intelligence problems.

New technology focus areas of interest in the domains of foundational GEOINT, advanced phenomenologies and analytic technologies align with the NGA Director’s Intent and the newly released NGA Tech Strategy. A COVID-19 rapid response topic will be one of the first items posted under the BIG-R BAA.

The BIG-R BAA can be found at https://sam.gov , solicitation number HM0476-20-BAA-0001, or http://www.grants.gov .​