GAO rejects arguments that evaluations were flawed

In February, we reported that the Government Accountability Office had denied several remaining protests involving the on-ramp for the Veterans Affairs Department's T4NG contract vehicle.

The Government Accountability Office has released the decisions after they had gone through a scrubbing process.

Seven companies filed protests when they failed to clear the first step of a phased evaluation and award methodology being used by the VA for the Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation vehicle.

All argued the evaluations were not properly conducted but the protests also were different enough that GAO issued separate decisions for most of the companies. Here are links to explore them further:

• AcesFed
• Blue Water Thinking
• MicroHealth
• Network Designs
• Rev LLC
• Trilogy Federal
• Veteran technology Partners III

An eighth company, Summit Technologies went straight to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with its challenge. But the judge rejected that argument.

The decisions highlight the uphill battle protesters often face when challenging how an evaluation was conducted.

Once the protests were resolved, the VA went ahead and made nine on-ramp awards in early March.