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A-76 Mix And Match Faulted By GAO

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 08.16.04

In Career Quest (Aug. 2, 2004), GAO sustained a protest of the GSA's decision under OMB Circular A-76 that it was more economical to continue performance of services in-house at the National Customer Support Center, as the agency evaluated the in-house offeror's technical performance plan based on a higher level of staffing than the same offeror included in its cost of performance. Inconsistencies between in-house offerors' staffing levels for compliance with work requirements and those it uses for calculating the cost of performance remain a persistent problem in A-76 competitions, and this decision sends the message that GAO will be alert to such shell games.

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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].”...