Recordings prove DIA wrong in $814M intelligence contract protest

Two protesters leaned on recordings of oral presentations to convince the Government Accountability Office that they were treated unfairly in the competition for an $814 million analytical support contract.

General Dynamics IT won the contract with U.S. Central Command to support the Joint Intelligence Operations Center, a fusion center that conducts current situation analysis and collection management activities. This hub also is responsible for long-range assessments and threat estimates.

SOS International and Amentum filed protests with GAO claiming that the Defense Intelligence Agency, which ran the procurement for CENTCOM, incorrectly attributed weaknesses to their technical proposals.

The companies made their technical proposals as oral presentations, not written ones. DIA recorded the presentations and that gave protesters the proof they needed to refute the agency’s findings, according to GAO's decision unsealed Tuesday.

For the oral presentations, DIA gave the bidders a set of three multi-part questions and a test scenario. The companies had 72 hours to prepare their presentations.

SOSi’s proposal was dinged because the evaluators said the company referenced a legacy network that has been decommissioned. But SOSi countered that it never mentioned the network in its oral presentation.

In its review, GAO also was not able to find any mention by SOSi of the defunct network.

“The agency asks us to accept the decreased confidence finding for SOSi’s oral presentation by simply referring to the evaluators’ conclusion, yet offers nothing from the audio recordings,” GAO wrote in its decision. “Our review of the contemporaneous record finds no support for the agency’s conclusion that SOSi relied on an outdated system to explain its expertise.”

For Amentum, DIA gave the company’s proposal a lower mark because it did not address upskilling of the workforce.

Amentum challenged its lower score compared to GDIT by arguing that DIA did not evenly apply the evaluation criteria. DIA held Amentum to a higher standard, the company said.

Here too, the audio recordings of the oral presentations came into play. DIA said Amentum made no mention of upskilling the incumbent workforce.

But in reviewing the oral presentation, GAO found where Amentum talks about upskilling. GAO also found Amentum proposed workforce development plans that were similar to GDIT’s.

In sustaining the protests, GAO has told DIA to re-evaluate proposals and make a new source selection decision. DIA must also document the process.

Thos decision also offers a lesson to agencies that use oral presentations – rigorously document your evaluation and back up your conclusions with specific references to the recording.