Information Systems Technology Corporation

B-288490.2 Jul 03, 2002 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights A firm protested an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) contract award for call center services at the Retirement Information Office, contending that the OPM misevaluated its revised proposal and unreasonably downgraded its technical score. GAO held that the evaluation and source selection were reasonable and consistent with evaluation factors. Accordingly, the protest was denied. View Decision Information Systems Technology Corporation, B-288490.2, July 3, 2002 DIGEST Attorneys DECISION Information Systems Technology Corporation (ISTC) protests the award of a contract to Spherix, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. OPM-RFP-00-01037DHH, issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), for call center services for the Retirement Information Office (RIO). ISTC argues that the agency misevaluated its revised proposal and unreasonably downgraded ISTC's technical score. We deny the protest. OPM's Retirement and Insurance Service (RIS) provides retirement, health benefits, and life insurance services to more than 2.4 million federal retirees and their survivors. The RIO serves as the primary point of contact for federal annuitants to obtain information relating to their benefits and to make changes to their retirement and insurance accounts. The RIO consists of three separate call centers located at different geographic locations and staffed by approximately 120 customer service specialists. The call centers are accessed by a single toll-free number that is "front ended" by an automated response system. Callers can bypass the call centers' automated system and speak with a customer service specialist. The specialist is available to answer retirement-related questions and perform a number of transactions relating to an annuitant's retirement and health insurance accounts. The RFP was issued on October 4, 2000 electronically through OPM's procurement website to acquire services necessary to handle "overflow" telephone calls to the RIO. The RFP contemplated the award of a fixed-priced, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. The contractor is required to establish and staff a call center to handle overflow telephone calls at an estimated 22,000 to 25,000 calls per month, process and transact a wide range of actions relating to the caller's account, and transmit these transactions to OPM's mainframe system on a daily basis and in a compatible format. RFP Sec. C.2. The RFP provided that an offeror first must demonstrate that it has successfully completed at least three similar projects, one within the past year, and has successfully transmitted data to an outside entity. After offerors satisfied this initial go/no-go criterion, they would be evaluated under the following technical evaluation factors in descending order of importance: (1) Firm's Experience and Qualifications in Similar Projects a. Corporate Experience b. Personnel Experience c. Past Performance (2) Understanding the Problem and the Approach to Solving the Problem a. Operating Plan b. Management Plan c. Quality Assurance Plan The RFP stated that the technical factors would be afforded a significantly higher weight than cost in selecting the successful offeror. Award would be made to the offeror whose proposal was determined most advantageous to the government, considering primarily the offeror's demonstrated technical excellence with price and other factors considered. Seven offerors submitted proposals that were reviewed by a four-person technical evaluation panel (TEP). Only the proposals of ISTC and Spherix were determined by the contracting officer to have a reasonable chance of being selected for award. The agency subsequently found both proposals to be conditionally acceptable and included both proposals in the competitive range. The TEP identified several weaknesses in both proposals and sent both ISTC and Spherix discussion questions. The TEP reviewed the offerors' responses to the discussions questions. As a result, ISTC's technical score increased from 83 points out of a possible 100 points to 92 points. Spherix increased its technical score from 91 points to 99 points. On April 12, 2001, the agency held oral negotiations with ISTC and Spherix. The contracting officer informed ISTC that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss concerns the agency had with respect to ISTC's understanding of the requirement because of its extremely low price. Specifically, the agency wanted to discuss with ISTC the T-1 telecommunications line requirement, staffing needs in the event of an emergency, and ISTC's understanding of the requirement for real-time display for monitoring activities. In responding to the agency's concerns, ISTC advised that of two alternate approaches it proposed in its initial proposal for interacting with OPM's database system it intended to implement the batch file transfer approach.