FBI reworking $5B IT contract

At first, the FBI was only reconsidering the competitive range of its $5 billion IT Enterprise Contract Services vehicle.

The agency was hit with a series of protests after several companies were eliminated from the competition.

Those protests were dismissed after the FBI told the Government Accountability Office that it was going to take a second look at the competition range. We reported that in February.

But now Deltek is reporting that the contracting office told bidders in early March that the solicitation had been canceled. The FBI is now reworking the acquisition strategy and will release a new solicitation in the future.

Attempts to reach the FBI for comment were unsuccessful.

In explaining its decision to cancel, the contracting office cited another GAO decision involving a separate contract that like ITECS was being competed as a blanket purchase agreement.

GAO ruled in favor of Noble Sales Co., which had objected to how a single-award BPA was evaluated. Noble Sales argued and GAO agreed that GSA released a solicitation that did not consider price as required by procurement laws and regulations. Pricing requirements also were inconsistent with the underlying Federal Supply Schedule contract.

My understanding of the ITECS protests is they involved the companies being eliminated as part of a self-scoring process, while the Noble Sales protest involved pricing. The connection might be the underlying requirements of the schedule contract.

We’ll have to see when the new ITECS solicitation comes out.