The government talks the talk, but very little walking (at least in the area of National Defense). Back in July of 2005 I was invited by the Small Business Administration to attend a conference in San Diego. CANVS was designated an “SBIR success story company” by the SBA for our Color Night Vision Goggles and Color Night Vision Video Systems delivered under a US SOCOM SBIR Phase-II Award. I guess it was sort of a big deal, only 9 companies out of thousands were selected. I would like to point out it was not important enough for them to pay for my trip to San Diego.
There I sat in the front row (rare occurrence of me in a suit and tie) listening to the SBA Administrator talk about how great the SBIR program is, how the companies selected were examples of how well everything works. I just couldn't sit there and take it. When he was finished and said “any questions”, this is more of a courtesy and no one is expected to ask anything, after all this is the top guy for SBA, I raised my hand, the few folks in the room who knew me were petrified, and rightfully so. I pointed out that because the product that I developed was for US Government use only, without Congressionally Mandated Funding, and follow up from the procurement folks, as far as I was concerned this was an abject failure. In addition, the Government representatives stood by and watched intellectual property developed by a veteran owned small business be handed to our competitors and did nothing to stop it. I asked if there was ever a push by the SBA to get POM Cycle Funding for procurement of SBIR Phase-II developed technologies that were wanted for large scale deployment and what steps would be taken to protect the Small Businesses Intellectual Property.
Time to take a brief break to tell you what POM Cycle Funding is.
The final product of the programming process within the Department of Defense, a Component's Program Objectives Memorandum (POM) displays the resource allocation decisions of the Military Department in response to, and in accordance with, the Guidance for Development of the Force (GDF) and Joint Programming Guidance (JPG). The POM shows programmed needs 6 years hence (i.e., in FY 2008, POM 2010-2015 was submitted). (DoD 7000.14-R) (Source: DAU Glossary of Defense Acquisition Acronyms & Terms).
Let me break this down for you in English. As a commander, I have to guess what I will need for my guys six years from now and ask for the money today from Congress or six years down the road I won't have a budget to buy anything!
So my question was this, given that the SBIR Phase-II program might produce military technology that could be of some use, why not have congressionally mandated funding so that IF there was technology that the folks in uniform wanted that came out of the SBIR Program there would be funding and protection in place for the Small Business.
The response was astounding, he claimed that SBA had asked for POM SBIR-II Transition funding many times and never got it approved.
Let me use my decoder ring to translate the meaning of this for you. Congress funds a program to allow Small Business to develop new technology but no help in protecting (through follow on funding) the Small Business after the development is complete. In theory there are laws in place that state that the Government can not purchase SBIR developed technologies from anyone but the company that developed it for at least 5 years from the end of the Phase-II SBIR Contract. It takes about 5 years for large scale procurement of equipment for the military. It looks like is once the technology is developed they simply wait the 5 years out, put funding lines for the large defense contractors to build the technologies in question. These are the same defense contractors who are large political contributors to the very folks who vote for the funding, and presto. This is one of the “self licking ice cream cone” scenarios.
There was an Under Secretary of Defense at the conference who was incensed by my accusation that SOCOM had mishandled CANVS IP, the fall out from this exchange will be the subject of another post (once my blood pressure goes down enough to objectively report the facts for you).
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