The Death of Alliant?

I once considered myself part of the acquisition community. And, I was proud to claim the association. I spent eight years at the Naval Air Systems Command conducting competitions, negotiating contracts and writing contract clearances and acquisition plans. I considered it a profession worthy of hard work and it gave me satisfaction.

When I look at acquisition today, I no longer do it with the pride I once did.

I do not believe that “competitions” conducted with a broad and deliberately vague statement of work and resulting in a ten- or twenty-year “hunting license” are how the Federal Government should procure goods and services. Debacles like the Alliant program are the result. A few large hardware programs notwithstanding, no one seems to be willing to conduct a competition for real work. Everything is theoretical and the actual work will be procured later on a delivery order against a GWAC or a MAC or a GSA Schedule contract or an IDIQ. This is what passes for competitive acquisition today. Apologists for the process blame the situation on a shortage of seasoned acquisition professionals. I’m sorry, but that’s just no excuse.

And, while I’m on the subject, the coming changes in the acquisition workforce do NOT constitute a crisis. A crisis happens as a result of a sudden and unexpected occurrence. This situation is neither. It’s been coming for 20 years and patently obvious for at least 10.

Whatever it is today and however worse it becomes, it no excuse for the shortcuts taken today and the shoddy contracts that result. The Alliant program is a terrible and sadly representative example, but I’m not talking about the Alliant protests. I’m talking about the contract GSA entered into with Calyptus Consulting Group to conduct evaluations of the prior performance of the Alliant offerors. There are so many things wrong with that contract it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll try.

First, evaluation of any part of an offeror’s proposal in a competitive acquisition is an inherently governmental function and NOT TO BE CONTRACTED OUT. I apologize for shouting, but the emphasis appears to be necessary. The FAR section on such functions does permit contractors to serve as technical advisors to source selection boards, but it cautions that such activities may rise to the level of an inherently governmental function if the contractor acts with autonomy or actually executes decisions on behalf of the source selection authority. That’s exactly what this contract did. This contract should never have been let no matter how minor the role seemed. It was simply not a contractor’s role to perform.

Second, no one monitored the contract to assure that the work was performed correctly. In his ruling upholding the Alliant protests on March 5th, Judge Francis Allegra wrote that Calyptus failed to treat the bidders fairly when asking questions and evaluating responses because GSA didn’t give the firm enough guidance.

Finally, on the front page of yesterday’s Federal Times, Elise Castelli broke a story in which she reveals that Calyptus had contracts with two of the same companies that it evaluated under the GSA contract. Both firms, by the way, were awarded Alliant contracts. There are no allegations of any impropriety on the part of either of the companies – or Calyptus for that matter. This isn’t about what anyone did or didn’t do. It’s about the integrity of the acquisition process and the responsibility for this chaos rests squarely on GSA.

Situations of this type are precisely what Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) is all about. A spokesman for one of the companies named in the story is quoted as saying “There is no conflict of interest. Calyptus was not part of our Alliant team nor did they help or support us in any way on our preparation of the Alliant proposal.” I’m sorry, but that’s not the point. Organizational conflict of interest is about the appearance of conflicting motivations in an organization, not what an individual or a team did or didn’t do. GSA had a responsibility to assure that there were no organizational conflicts and they didn’t do that.

Of course, Calyptus doesn’t walk away from this completely clean. If memory serves me, a certification of the absence of any OCI is part of the representation and certifications package in services contracts – like the one Calyptus signed with GSA. If they signed such a certification, in my opinion it was defective. If GSA never even asked for one, shame on them. It’s not like the relationship between Calyptus and the Alliant offerors was a secret. The Federal Times article includes descriptions of their contracts with the Alliant offerors from the Calyptus web site!

Judge Allegra’s ruling seemed to leave the door open for GSA to move forward with the Alliant contracts if they could work out the issues with the protestors. Given the new revelations, this acquisition may be so tainted that nothing can save it. Even if GSA decided to award contracts to all the protestors, how many of the other unsuccessful offerors would have – or should have – protested if they had known how the evaluations were really conducted, and by whom?

What a mess. And this program is being run by the Federal Government’s foremost acquisition organization? If we’re in this situation today, what will it be like when that crisis everyone is talking about in the acquisition workforce finally arrives?