The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a five year broad agency announcement (BAA) for international collaboration on cybersecurity, according to a Feb. 6 posting to FedBizOpps.
The BAA was issued in support of DHS’s Cyber Security Division (CSD) international collaborations. The announcement is meant to generally support DHS Science and Technology (S&T), the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), the DHS Cyber Security Division (CSD), and targeted research and development (R&D) projects.
The announcement aims to facilitate international cooperation activities with CSD’s international partners with foreign government participation, including access to white papers and proposal submissions for purposes of determining joint collaboration projects through the contract performance period. International partners include the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the European Union, Germany, Israel, Sweden, New Zealand, Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, and unnamed future international partners.
While DHS said the project is subject to official fiscal appropriation, they expect the CSD program to have a total funding of $9.5 million over five years. The BAA noted that is not a promise of assured funding and it “is uncertain and is subject to change” which may occur because of government discretion.
Foreign Government participation will be determined in advance of publication of a call, the announcement said.
This five-year long open BAA gives the Department the ability to make calls throughout the life of the BAA allowing for the “quick and efficient delivery of practical R&D services to generate potential solutions for each technical topic area”. The BAA does not request or solicit any white papers or proposals at the time it was issued, although and solicitations for them will in the future be accomplished via amendments to the announcement.
Technical topic representative of program areas the BAA is likely to support include Cyber Apex, Cyber.gov, software assurance, cyber security for law enforcement, cyber physical systems, cyber for critical infrastructure, mobile security, network system security, cybersecurity outreach, data privacy and identity management, transition to practice, research infrastructure, Homeland Security Open Source Technologies, aviation cybersecurity, and human aspects of cyber security.
Future solicitations under the BAA will identify the CSD international partner the division is collaborating with, identify specific details regarding the solicitation/technical topic area, identify submission instructions beyond what is in the initial BAA, and contain a cutoff date for submissions.
In submitted proposals the CSD with fund only the U.S. performer while the named international partner will fund the non-U.S. performer. DHS said there will be no partial selection for funding for just one country’s component of any project.
Performers in the technical program will also be required to test and evaluate their technologies respecting project goals and may use DHS facilities equipped for such cybersecurity operations testing if they wish.