NeedipeDIA is an unclassified website that communicates mission needs to innovators and invites collaborative engagement with industry and academia. It is a mechanism that enables:

• Linkage of mission needs to innovative ideas and solutions.
• Open engagement with industry and academia.

Stakeholders include:

• Internal DIA workforce.
• Academic institutions.
• External industry solution providers.
• Other Intelligence Community partners.
• Other Government agencies.

Needs and requirements map to DIA mission areas:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• New analysis technologies and methods.
• Enhanced counterintelligence and security.
• Intelligence collections.
• Mission enhancing science and technology.
• Improves mission support capabilities.
• Increase organizational effectiveness.
• Empower partnerships.
• Emerging and innovative technologies for rapid operations transition.
• Other innovative capabilities.

A Broad Agency Announcement and Commercial Solutions Opening contain the instructions for submitting a proposal. This process meets Federal acquisition regulations, and is an entry point for the acquisition process.

Incentives include:

• Promotes an agile process for solution responses from industry and academia.
• Enables mission elements to acquire mission solutions rapidly.
• Enables mission elements to point industry and academia to a specific mission area or need, thus limiting responses to unsolicited communications.
• Communicates clearly expectations of review timelines.
• Clearly telegraphs to the interagency and Intelligence Community opportunities to partner on specific needs or existing solutions.

• NeedipeDIA is a rapid and agile process that is responsive to evolving mission needs.
• It is dynamically updated significantly reducing the time required by traditional acquisition practices.
• NeedipeDIA does not replace existing BAAs or preclude the publishing of future BAAs by DIA. NeedipeDIA is just one tool among many acquisition mechanisms available for satisfying DIA needs. It is meant to enable a legal and ethical conversation with industry and academia on needs in timely manner. NeedipeDIA ensures an even playing field for conversations with industry and academia as needs are refined, possible solutions are investigated, and most importantly, mission practitioners discover what they did not know to ask for.

NeedipeDIA does not address the contract practices after a funding decision is made. It only provides a mechanism for transitioning to the next stage in the acquisition phase.

E-mail: Ideas2Action@dodiis.mil.

1. Read the Open BAA and Open CSO instructions (these links will lead directly to the BAA/CSO instructions documents).
2. Identify one of the CURRENT NEEDS from the list below that best matches your proposed solution.
3. Prepare a white paper by following the format requirements, starting on page 8 of the Open BAA, and use the most current coversheet.
4. Submit your unclassified white paper to Ideas2Action@dodiis.mil. If you have a classified white paper, please send us an email and someone will walk you through the steps.

Properly aligning your capability to a mission need is essential for successful review. Specifically:

• If you can't articulate how your capability addresses the mission need, then you have probably selected the wrong mission need.
• Section 4 of your white paper is used to route the proposed innovative method, process or technology to the end users closest to the mission need.
• The more specific the need, the better chance of aligning funds to support.
• If you need clarity on a mission need, ask us and we will work to enhance clarity.
• Mission relevance is the most important review criteria.
• White papers should avoid technical jargon and product branding.
• Mission review of mission enhancing science and technology is more technical. Feel free to expound on the technical merit of your approach.
• For all other categories, white papers should speak to direct mission impact. Technical merit will be formally established later during the proposal review stage.
• NeedipeDIA is designed to support DIA's "Start Small. Scale Fast. Fail Cheap." approach.
• Smaller (<$650,000) initiatives are preferred.
• Quick win (within 6 months) initiatives are preferred.
• For mission enhancing science and technology, longer projects (<18 months) may be warranted.
• Other solicitation methods are used for major systems acquisitions.

"Considering" indicates a more general DIA mission area need that is under consideration, while "Active" indicates an innovative solution is currently being sought.