How will NIH resolve the remaining CIO-SP4 protests?
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By
Nick Wakeman
Nearly 40 protests are pending even after so many others involving the $50 billion IT vehicle were sustained.
Apparently, the decision to sustain a group of protests involving the CIO-SP4 IT contract is not the final word in that battle
There are still nearly 40 active protests at the Government Accountability Office involving that $50 billion IT vehicle.
Decisions on some of those are due July 10, but others have a due date as late as October. Some of those have been filed since GAO’s June 29 decision on the first group of protests.
I’m not sure why this is significant, but GAO ruled on the first 64 protests that were filed by companies that worked with external legal counsel.
Many of the remaining protests involve companies that filed their protests without counsel. GAO drew this distinction when it announced its decision June 29 and repeated that distinction when I followed up with them this week.
During the two years that protests have dragged on for CIO-SP4, the majority involved the self-scoring mechanism that NIH's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center used to pick which companies should move onto the procurement's second and third phases. Companies complained that the self-scoring threshold was arbitrary.
GAO found the self-scoring mechanism was flawed and wants NITAAC to re-evaluate proposals and make new determinations of which companies should advance past phase one.
GAO’s written decision hasn’t been released yet. NITAAC says it won’t comment until it is released.
At this stage, I’m left wondering about one thing. Will NITAAC take corrective action on the remaining protests and implement GAO’s recommendations across the board?
That seems to be the logical and prudent thing to do rather than slog through more decisions from GAO.
A corrective action isn’t a panacea. GAO will still have to make sure the solution applies to each individual protest to verify that it addresses the complaints in specific protests. That takes time as well.
The clock is also ticking for NITAAC. CIO-SP3 is set to expire Oct. 29, but the agency has the option of extending it again if needed.