Case of unfair and un-impartial competition

The case is:

Cellebrite, Inc., B-420371.2, April 28, 2022 (Publicly issued July 18, 2022)

The agency "Cellebrite, Inc." complained that the procurement procedures didn't offer fair and impartial competition and asked the "Contracting Officers" of the "GAO - Government Accountability Office" to investigate and take the required corrective actions.

• GAO found unobjectionable an agency’s decision to not permit revised pricing as part of corrective action.
• In response to a prior protest, the United States Secret Service (USSS) took corrective action by amending the solicitation to clarify language contained in the corporate experience factor and the management and staffing approach factor. The amendment also revised the curriculum demonstration factor to permit subcontractor instructors to present during the curriculum demonstration presentation, provided they were previously included in the previous key personnel proposal submission.
• USSS denied the protester’s request that the agency allow it to amend its price because its investment and growth in the interceding 5 months, as a newly listed public company, resulted in increased efficiencies and reduced operating costs.
• In response to the protest, the agency emphasized that Cellebrite’s request to revise its price was not based on any changes made to its proposal in response to the solicitation amendment.
• GAO found no basis to object to the agency’s corrective action because the record established that the corrective action was narrowly tailored to clarify the procurement improprieties that the agency sought to resolve during corrective action.

Contracting officers in negotiated procurements have broad discretion to take corrective action where the agency determines that such action is necessary to ensure fair and impartial competition, and the details of corrective action are within the sound discretion and judgment of the contracting agency. An agency may reasonably limit the scope of proposal revisions permitted during corrective action, provided such limitation is appropriate to remedy the procurement impropriety. GAO generally will not object to the specific corrective action, so long as it is appropriate to remedy the concern that caused the agency to take corrective action.