The Navy's Best Manufacturing Practices Program (BMP), sponsored by ONR, is transforming the way the government does business by serving as an "honest broker" for technology transfer. BMP was created in 1985 to overcome the sometimes large disparities in the quality, cost, and reliability of the goods and services that the Navy acquired from its contractors. BMP has met its initial goal of significantly reducing disparities and gone on to spread the benefits of its knowledge and expertise beyond the Navy acquisition community. BMP works by assembling teams of impartial experts from government, industry, and academia that document best practices worth sharing with the business community. Surveys conducted by the teams are not audits, but rather data-gathering, analysis, and information disseminating exercises. To date, more than 120 surveys have been conducted, 5,000 best practices documented, how-to guidelines published, and an Internet site established at http://www.bmpcoe.org/ that contains best practices and systems engineering tools. BMP recently received the Hammer Award for its success in cutting through the legal and cultural barriers that prevented government, industry, and academia from learning through the successes and failures of their fellow organizations. The Hammer Award was established by Vice President Al Gore as part of the reinventing government initiative.