Is Verizon winning its LPTA battle with DISA?
By
Nick Wakeman
Verizon has filed a pair of protests involving the use LPTA for a DISA task order to provide communications services to the Air Force. Each protest has pushed the Air Force to take a corrective action, but will it finally abandon LPTA?
It’s taken a couple protests but Verizon may have finally convinced DISA to rework the solicitation for a task order it wanted to award via an LPTA evaluation.
Verizon has filed two protests with the Government Accountability Office because DISA wanted to award a task order for the Air Force to buy telecommunications services. They are using GSA’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle.
The company filed its first protest in December because DISA and the Air Force were using a lowest price, technically acceptable evaluation criteria. Verizon argued that this was improper use of LPTA and violated recent statues barring the use of LPTA in many instances.
DISA took a corrective action and Verizon’s protest was dismissed by GAO. But Verizon filed its second protest arguing that the corrective action didn’t go far enough and that DISA was still using LPTA.
Now, DISA and the Air Force have taken another corrective action and GAO has again dismissed Verizon’s protest.
This time around, DISA is promising to amend the solicitation to make sure it accurately reflects its needs. They also told GAO that they will analyze the solicitation to make sure it complies with DOD acquisition regulations.
Verizon declined to comment on what they think of the new corrective action.
No dollar value is available for this task order but the scope is significant. It will provide the Air Force Recruiting Services with a high-bandwidth telecommunications network. It’ll be for 13 years and cover nearly 1,000 locations. The recruiting locations apparently do not have a unified network currently.
I find it interesting that no other EIS holder filed their own protest against LPTA. I could speculate but I won't.