Two government-contracting trade organizations have urged the Defense Department to take action to address their concerns about DoD’s use of a “lowest price, technically acceptable” method for selecting vendors for its Encore III information technology acquisition program.
The Professional Services Council and the IT Alliance for Public Sector told DoD acquisition chief Frank Kendall in a joint letter published April 22 they believe the LPTA method to be “inappropriate” for the Encore III contract vehicle and is in “direct contradiction” to the department’s guidance on that source selection process.
The Defense Information Systems Agency released the formal request for proposals on the contract March 3 and closed the bid solicitation April 25.
Encore III has an overall ceiling value of $17.5 billion over 10 years and will cover IT products and services that can be potentially used to support the department’s Joint Information Environment.
In their letter to Kendall, PSC and ITAPS explained that using LPTA is inappropriate because of the complexity of the program’s technology requirements.
The trade groups also pointed to an uncertainty on the technical labor market over the next decade and a disconnect between the costs being evaluated for the LPTA process and the actual work to be carried out under Encore III.
PSC and ITAPS said they believe “cost/technical tradeoff” analysis is the proper method to assess industry proposals on the contract since the department is looking for high-caliber IT offerings and not just commodity technology products.