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Inadequate Justification for Restrictive Requirements Leads to Injunction

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 01.10.11

After having been thrown out of GAO for purportedly not being an interested party to challenge Interior’s restriction of its procurement of a department-wide messaging and cloud computing system to Microsoft resellers on the GSA schedule, Google found a more sympathetic ear, and standing to complain, in the CFC. In Google, Inc. v. U.S. (Jan. 4, 2011), the court found that Interior had failed to take several of the procedural steps required by CICA and the FAR to justify the restrictive specification of Microsoft products, enjoined the procurement, and remanded the matter to the agency for it to follow the correct steps of the process.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 10.30.26

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Tried to Fix PIA Violation with a Second PIA Violation

Recent sustain decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC and Reliance Test & Technology send a clear message: when an agency tries to fix a Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violation by committing a second one, the cure can be just as fatal as the disease. The cases involved the U.S. Air Force’s $1.8 billion procurement for O&M services at Elgin Air Force Base. During discussions, the Air Force inadvertently released a pricing overview slide with all offerors’ bottom-line evaluated costs to Reliance Test & Technology, which immediately notified the agency of the error. In response, the Air Force decided to level the playing field by providing the same information to all the other offerors in the procurement, stating, “[o]fferors may consider this disclosure in their [final proposal revision].”...