Protest spotlight

(This regular feature highlights protests decided by the Government Accountability Office.)

Agency: Defense Information Systems Agency

Awardee: General Dynamics Information Technology

Protester: DRS Technical Services

What GAO found: DRS protested DISA's award of a contract to GDIT for communications systems acquisition, integration, installation and operations and maintenance, arguing the agency made what was supposed to be a best-value competition into a lowest-priced, technically acceptable evaluation.

Of the five submitted proposals, the GDIT and DRS ones were the highest rated, the GAO report says. DRS' proposal "offered the highest-rated technical solution with the second-lowest cost/price, and GDIT’s proposal was rated acceptable with the lowest cost/price," the document adds.

GDIT's evaluated price for the work was $132.1 million compared to DRS' evaluated price of $152.1 million.

"'I believe the price/cost premium of more than 15 percent, and nearly $20M of the DRS proposal compared to the GDIT proposal negates the benefits of DRS’s superior technical approach,'" the source selection authority wrote to explain the final decision, according to the GAO report.

GAO denied the protest, backing the government's evaluation process.

"DRS’s protest provides no basis to question the SSA's tradeoff decision," the report says. "Again, the mere fact that the SSA, in a best-value procurement where the technical factors are of greater importance than price, nevertheless determines that the technically-lower rated offeror is a better value than the higher cost/price offeror, does not show that the source selection was improper."

The decision: http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/674181.pdf