Computer Information Specialist, Inc. File: B-293049; B-293049.2

Title and Citation

United States General Accounting Office (GAO) Decision

Matter of: Computer Information Specialist, Inc. File: B-293049; B-293049.2

Date: January 23, 2004

Facts of the Case

A solicitation was sent out by the Department of Health and Human Services for telecommunications support services. The specifications of the solicitation stated that a contract would be awarded with fixed hourly rates for a base year and up to four 1-year options. The agency intends to award the contract based on best value to the government. The evaluation factors would be rated with non-price criteria being significantly more important that price. Numerous offers were received and the agency selected a competitive range. Discussions were held with those vendors and received revised proposals. Computer Information Specialist, Inc. (CIS) was part of the competitive range but was not selected as the award winner. After requesting and receiving a debrief, CIS filed a protest with the agency stating that both its proposal and the awardees’ were misevaluated. Technology Group, Inc. (OTG) received the award.

Issues

The main issue of this case is the handling of the evaluations by the Source Selection Committee. According to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) “an agency shall evaluate competitive proposals and then assess their relative qualities solely on the factors and subfactors specified in the solicitation... The relative strengths, deficiencies, significant weaknesses, and risks supporting proposal evaluation shall be documented in the contract file.” The source selection decision document (SSDD) did not have any independent analysis by the source to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Chapter 15 Subpart 305, “An agency shall evaluate competitive proposals and then assess their relative qualities solely on the factors and subfactors specified in the selection official as required by FAR 15.308. It instead relied mostly upon the fifth...