Alliant Redux - Twice?

The General Services Administration has announced that it will re-evaluate all 62 proposals received for its Alliant information technology services contract. This is in response to Judge Francis Allegra’s ruling that the criteria GSA used to evaluate the proposals were "arbitrary and capricious." Of course, the potential conflict of interest problem with Calyptus’ gathering of the prior performance evaluation data must have contributed.


As I predicted in my first Blog post on Alliant back on March 14th, there was really no other option. Judge Allegra barred GSA from using the prior performance data gathered by Calyptus in any future Alliant awards. He also ordered GSA to (adequately) take price into account in any future evaluations. The judge said GSA had based its award decisions on flawed past performance data rather than best value. The option he offered [for GSA] to work out a mutually satisfactory solution with the eight protestors was never really practical. Nothing that satisfied the eight protestors was going to be acceptable to the rest of the “disappointed bidders.”


In an article in the Federal Times yesterday, Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, a Washington-based contractor trade association was quoted as saying "While this is the most time consuming of the outcomes GSA could pursue, it's also the one that they were inevitably going to have to pursue."


No one knows how long the re-evaluation will take, but it likely will not be quick. Everyone is watching and you can bet this time GSA is going to make sure every “T” is crossed and every “I” is dotted.


Of course, reevaluation of the Alliant proposals isn’t the whole story.
In parallel with the unrestricted portion of the Alliant competition, there was a separate solicitation set aside for small business participation. The Alliant Small Business solicitation attracted 142 offerors out of which GSA selected 62 companies to receive an award. The list of “winners” was released in December, but, curiously, no executed contracts were ever actually distributed to the named companies. The reason became clear last week when GSA announced that, like the unrestricted side of Alliant, the agency would be reevaluating all of the proposals. Offerors were asked to extend the validity of their offers through October (2008) to permit time for the reevaluation.


The first reaction to this development is to congratulate GSA on a proactive stance on a thorny problem. Closer examination, however, reveals that GSA was reacting to four protests filed in response to the Alliant Small Business awards. GAO dismissed the protests only after GSA agreed to the reevaluation.
These developments effectively bring the entire Alliant program to a halt.
And, of course, the possibility still exists for new protests on both sides of the program when the reevaluations are completed and the new awards are announced.


By late summer or early fall we could see Alliant contracts and maybe even Alliant Small Business awards, but there is little possibility that Federal agency customers will hold their funds betting on that outcome. More likely, agency customers will find other outlets for their IT funds and take their business elsewhere.


GSA will probably offer up several of its existing vehicles including Millennia, Answer, STARS and the IT Schedule 70 programs, but those have their issues as well.


All in all, it looks like GSA is back to square one. They didn’t pass GO and they sure aren’t collecting any money on Alliant.