How a partner letter derailed WidePoint's $3B DHS incumbent win

A non-compliant carrier commitment letter should have been enough to deem WidePoint Corp. as ineligible from its bid to retain an incumbent mobile device management contract with the Homeland Security Department.

DHS still went ahead and selected WidePoint’s proposal anyway in June for the potential 10-year, $3 billion Cellular Wireless Managed Services 3.0 contract. Rival bidder Turning Point Global Solutions then successfully protested DHS’ award decision on multiple grounds involving the evaluation of proposals and an alleged conflict-of-interest at Widepoint.

The Government Accountability Office made its decision in September to sustain Turning Point’s protest, then unsealed the ruling Oct. 7. This redacted version of the decision details the carrier commitment letter that GAO found not to have followed the solicitation’s instructions.

DHS required competitors at minimum to secure commitment letters from major wireless carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and the FirstNet public safety network.

Bidders could secure letters from other local/regional carriers if applicable, but commitments from those named four were mandatory to get through evaluation’s first of two phases.

WidePoint submitted 17 carrier commitment letters, including one from the pager service provider Spok. Under their agreement, Spok committed to working with WidePoint for the full contract’s duration or “the term of the WidePoint reseller agreement with Spok, whichever terminates earlier.”

In its defense to GAO, DHS said that commitment letters from any carriers other than the four named providers were not subject to the request for proposals’ minimum requirements.

GAO found that interpretation by DHS to be unreasonable and pointed to the solicitation’s clause that says the department would assess if all carriers who signed commitment letters are committed to the full contract’s term.

“Reading the solicitation as the agency argues--to permit submission of a commitment letter without the actual commitment to providing services--would render the solicitation requirement meaningless,” GAO wrote in its ruling.

DHS also claimed the challenged letter from Spok was “at most a minor defect” and that the letters played no role in the award decision.

But as GAO pointed out, and the solicitation said, WidePoint was ineligible to proceed to phase two of the competition because of that non-compliant letter.

GAO also sided with Turning Point’s argument that WidePont’s proposal should have been deemed unacceptable because it took exception to the solicitation’s requirements involving management approaches.

The RFP requires the winning contractor to operate under a set of service level agreements outlined in the statement of work and would face financial disincentives for not meeting those requirements.

Widepoint proposed a framework of SLAs that outlined how if the volume of work exceeded certain quantities as determined by the company, the required work would be waived unless the agency provided additional funding to WidePoint.

Turning Point argued that DHS would have been faced with a binary choice of either accepting “poorer performance than the solicitation required,” or having to “pay WidePoint more money.”

GAO agreed that WidePoint assumed DHS would waive the SLAs unless additional funding was provided, an approach that would have gone against the solicitation’s material requirements.

GAO denied Turning Point’s argument that DHS did not look at allegations of a conflict-of-interest at WidePoint because the protester “has not identified any hard facts supporting” the claim.

But two out of three claims were enough for GAO to send the CWMS 3.0 contract back to DHS.

GAO recommends DHS re-evaluate phase one and two proposals, reopen discussions with bidders if appropriate, conduct and document a new best-value tradeoff analysis, and make a new award decision.

GAO said DHS should also terminate WidePoint’s contract for the convenience of the government if the agency chooses someone else in the re-evaluation. The department received three proposals in its first award attempt, including WidePoint’s bid.

One lesson seems clear here: make sure your key partners are committed to the full term of the contract with the government customer. Having plans to go elsewhere in the event they cannot also might help too, as would writing those plans down for the customer to have peace of mind.

A second evergreen lesson is to follow the RFP’s instructions. Attempts to read the mind of the customer and make assumptions do not feel like a recipe for success.