A type of contractual agreement often used by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) that facilitates cooperation between private organizations and the U.S. government for the purposes of encouraging development of new technology with the ultimate goal of turning that technology over to the private sector. Network Solutions, Inc. (now VeriSign, Inc.) entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation in 1993 to provide Internet domain name registration services. That agreement was transferred from NSF to the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1998 and is still in force today.