How DOD detailed its conflict probe in audit support award
gettyimages.com/Edwin Tan
By
Nick Wakeman
Guidehouse argued that a Defense Department official had a conflict-of-interest, but a new bid protest decision outlines how DOD's investigation showed no evidence of harm.
The Government Accountability Office's denial of Guidehouse's protest over an audit support contract that went to Deloitte outlines the right way and the wrong way to determine if there is a conflict of interest.
Guidehouse has twice protested the Defense Department’s choice of Deloitte for an $80 million contract to support the DOD comptroller.
As we have previously reported, both protests alleged a conflict-of-interest because one of the DOD officials working on the procurement was a former Deloitte consultant. That person still had a 401(k) from when they were employed by Deloitte.
In the first protest, GAO said that DOD hadn’t documented the investigation into the alleged conflict. In fact, GAO said it could not rule on whether there was a conflict or not because DOD did not provide any evidence of what they had done.
GAO sent the contract back to DOD to investigate the possible conflict.
DOD did that and more. For a second time, DOD awarded the contract to Deloitte and Guidehouse again filed a protest over that DOD official's connection to Deloitte.
GAO both denied that second protest and laid out what DOD did this time around that mitigated the possible conflict, according to the decision released Thursday.
One notable change is that the former Deloitte employee no longer served as the chair of the technical evaluation board.
But that official was still part of the team that developed the contract's requirement.
DOD pulled in another person to go over the official's work when the latter were a member of the integrated product team that developed the performance work statement.
The conclusion is that the official worked on version zero. There were seven versions before the PWS was finalized.
The official Guidehouse complained about also helped develop the scenarios that bidders had to respond to. But that work was done as part of a team.
The official also worked on drafting the request for quotations, but again this role was as part of a team.
DOD turned over their findings along with notes, emails and drafts from the work developing the contract’s solicitation and the evaluation process.
GAO found no evidence that this person added anything or took away anything that would have benefited Deloitte.
“The record leads us to conclude that the agency has affirmatively demonstrated the absence of any competitive harm to Guidehouse,” GAO wrote.
For the second protest, DOD piled on the documentation that there was no conflict-of-interest.
My question is, why didn't they do that the first time around?