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Congress Considers Tweaking IT Spending

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.17.16

On October 5, the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to commercial information technology providers requesting information about “whether federal agencies, to the fullest extent possible, incorporate preexisting, commercial and non-developmental IT solutions into their modernization efforts and if not, the barriers to their doing so.” Noting that the federal government spent about $80 billion on IT in FY 2015, the committee requested “recommendations” sent to ITContracting@finance.senate.gov by November 2, 2016, for how competition for IT contracts could be broadened by increased use of commercial contracting procedures and fixed-price contracts or changes to evaluation criteria and source selection factors.

Insights

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].”...