EDRC BAA Proposal

The above is the rough thoughts of a few people, and does not represent a plan of OSGeo at this time.

The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (EDRC) has issued a broad area announcement soliciting proposals meeting the needs of various ERDC research labs. A review of the announcement, and previous feedback from users of OSGeo software in these agencies indicate that there are a number of things that would be useful to ERDC labs, that are also objectives of OSGeo.

In particular, the OSGeo plan to produce an OSGeo Binary Distribution of various products would help the labs greatly in deploying open source geospatial software. Especially if such released packages could then be put through a DOD vetting and certification process and approved for broad use within DOD.

There are also a number of improvements to specific OSGeo products that could potentially be handled through the same contracting mechanism.

Documents

• http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/contract/docs/FY2006BAA1.pdf - The announcement

To Pursue

• We need a proposal lead familiar with producing proposals (especially federal gov. or military)
• We need to produce a pre-proposal listing individuals/organizations that would be involved in the project.
• If we want to submit the proposal as OSGeo, then we need a DUNS number (and perhaps there are other issues) to be a federal contractor.
• We need to hammer out what activities we are proposing, and price them out in terms of labour/overhead etc.

Some Random Notes

• I think much of our work falls within the venue of CRREL-62 (GIS Technologies for Environmental And Geological Applications) though it may be helpful to connect some of the work to other projects.
• From a EDRC point of view, I think the important deployment platforms are Windows, Linux and Solaris, likely in that order of precidence.
• A proposal can (and likely ought to be) multi year, and can contain many optional items. If some optional items are not initially funded but we find other parts of DOD with similar requirements and research goals then they can partner with EDRC on funding fairly easily. So we should aim to add in a variety of items that have some potential value to EDRC even if we don't expect them to be initially funded.
• We need to stay focused on activities that are released as open source, and that benefit the broad user base in order that we not compromise our 501(c)3 status, and core mission by morphing into a contracting agency.