Inadequate Justification for Restrictive Requirements Leads to Injunction

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.