NOAA Awards Contract to Establish Ocean Partnership Office

NOAA Research, through NOAA Ocean Exploration, has awarded a $3.5 million, five-year contract to Integrated Systems Solutions, Inc. (ISS) to establish the National Oceanographic Partnership Program Office to support NOAA and the Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in their role in jointly co-chairing the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) Federal Interagency Working Group (IWG).


On August 11, 2022, the Saildrone Surveyor (orange vessel) departed Dutch Harbor in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, for a multipartner project supported by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program to better understand the ocean and seafloor in one of the most remote and understudied parts of the United States. Photo courtesy of Saildrone Inc.


Established by Congress, the role of NOPP is to advance economic development, protect quality of life, strengthen science education and communication, and assure national security by improving knowledge of the ocean through partnerships among federal agencies, academia, industry, and nongovernmental organizations.

The NOPP Program Office will facilitate communication across ocean science sectors to expand the scope of public/private partnerships; plan and facilitate fora and workshops; provide administrative support to the NOPP IWG; support the NOPP peer review grant process; facilitate the annual NOPP Excellence in Partnership Award; support drafting the NOPP annual report to Congress; and coordinate NOPP outreach and education activities including the NOPP.org website. The fully staffed virtual office is being led by Alan Leonardi, Ph.D., serving as the ISS designated program manager.

“This new contract award is outstanding news for NOPP,” said Jeremy Weirich, director of NOAA Ocean Exploration, who serves as the NOPP IWG co-chair, said “The NOPP Program Office will play a critical role in advancing ocean science research and education by helping the federal ocean programs continue to leverage resources and invest in priorities that fall between agency missions or that are too large for any single agency to support. As a federal leader in the ocean community, NOAA Ocean Exploration looks forward to working with ISS, ONR, and all our NOPP partners to implement the strategic vision for the newly established program office.”

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 authorized the secretary of the Navy and NOAA to jointly establish the partnership program office for the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. The cost of the NOPP Program Office will be equally shared through a new interagency agreement between ONR and NOAA Research.

The award was made through NOAA’s Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Program (ProTech) Oceans Domain as a small business set-aside. ISS has provided support services to NOAA for 16 years.


Location: USA