Unisys reverses course on TSA protest

Unisys Corp. has withdrawn its protest with the Government Accountability Office over the awarding of the Transportation Security Administration’s Information Technology Infrastructure Program contract to Computer Sciences Corp., a Unisys official confirmed Wednesday.

Unisys spokesman Brad Bass said he had had no further information.

The protest filed Feb. 19, was the company’s second over the ITIP award, for which Unisys was the incumbent since the inception of the contract in 2002.

The ITIP award has been worth over $1 billion to Unisys and going forward was valued at $500 million over five years to run TSA’s information technology infrastructure.

At the time, a statement from Unisys said only, “We believe that the TSA has failed to act in accordance with the GAO recommendations of Jan. 20, 2010.”

In its ruling Jan. 20, GAO recommended that TSA reopen the competition.

GAO said Unisys and General Dynamics Corp. were not fully informed about the basis for preparing pricing proposals in terms of the incentive fee. General Dynamics also was misled about its proposal page and the section relating to risk, the GAO said.

The company filed an initial protest in July 2008 with GAO and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Dispute Resolution for Acquisition.

Unisys filed the FAA protest because TSA formerly used FAA’s procurement regulations before adopting the GAO’s Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) in June 2008.