The CIA’s Directorate of Digital Innovation, or DDI, is seeking an improved relationship with GovCons through additional industry days and faster contracting vehicles to help it better procure services.
Juliane Gallina, CIA deputy director for digital innovation, said Thursday at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Digital Transformation Summit that she has encouraged the typically tight-lipped agency to be more open and transparent so that industry better understands what it needs. Gallina said her directorate has been proactive about setting up recurring engagements with industry, especially large incumbents, to build communications and trust in advance of a challenging situation.
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The DDI has had over 75 engagements with industry over the past year. Gallina said she specifically created a division called Digital Futures to meet with interested vendors who don’t already have a relationship with the CIA when the DDI front office doesn’t have time. This team, she said, is specifically designed to help potential vendors navigate the CIA, which is designed to be opaque.
Gallina said the wrong time to start talking to GovCons is at the end of a period of performance.
“If we’re meeting regularly and talking regularly, even when there’s no crisis, when crisis comes, we know what it is like to look each other in the eye,” Gallina said.
Helping GovCons Find Requirements
This Digital Futures team also serves as a matchmaker within the CIA to help the agency be more accessible. Gallina said that while this doesn’t mean a GovCon will get a contract right away, Digital Futures will point them in the right direction. She said Digital Futures in 2024 introduced over 350 new vendors into the CIA’s procurement ecosystem. Additionally, the CIA has created its Digital Hammer broad area announcement. Gallina called this a productive method for new entrants to discover requirements for agency work.
More DDI Industry Days
The CIA’s Office of Acquisition Management has restructured its program management center of excellence and created a trio of industry events. Gallina said one of these is DDI Imagine, a twice-per-year event that hosts up to 120 industry partners and gives GovCons presentations on key DDI mission needs, updates on acquisition vehicles and topics to move the DDI-industry relationship forward. The next DDI Imagine is on April 30.
Another event, DDI Impact, is a smaller forum held once per year that is focused on helping DDI understand challenges from a vendor perspective. Gallina said a few challenges are selected from the forum where DDI can find solutions to improve its relationship with the industry.
Faster DDI Contracting
The third event, DDI Ignite, is a pitch day focused on AI capabilities that helps DDI accelerate market research. Gallina said the version of DDI Ignite had 103 companies submit 203 ideas, resulting in DDI selecting 46 companies to submit pitches. DDI Ignite, she said, also helped DDI create the first other transaction authority, or OTA, task order focused on AI-powered acquisition.
Gallina said the CIA hadn’t used OTAs until the fall of 2024, when DDI was the first to use one. The directorate, she said, has awarded five and has multiple OTAs soon to be awarded that are still in negotiations. These OTAs have taken months to award, but Gallina wants to issue them “much, much” faster.
Gallina said DDI moving forward wants to teach junior officers how to work with GovCons in a fair and transparent way that isn’t preferential to any one vendor.
“Consistent and compliant with federal acquisition regulations but also allows for innovation and speed,” she described. “That is our hope.”
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