B-295990.4; B-295990.5, Cogent Systems, Inc., October 6, 2005

B-295990.4; B-295990.5, Cogent Systems, Inc., October 6, 2005 TITLE: B-295990.4; B-295990.5, Cogent Systems, Inc., October 6, 2005 BNUMBER: B-295990.4; B-295990.5 DATE: October 6, 2005 ************************************************************* B-295990.4; B-295990.5, Cogent Systems, Inc., October 6, 2005 DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been approved for public release. Decision Matter of: Cogent Systems, Inc. File: B-295990.4; B-295990.5 Date: October 6, 2005 Ron R. Hutchinson, Esq., and Gerard F. Doyle, Esq., Doyle & Bachman LLP, for the protester. Capt. Geraldine Chanel, Lt. Col. Thomas C. Modeszto, and Raymond M. Saunders, Esq., Department of the Army, for the agency. David Apatoff, Esq., and Shannon R. Hall, Esq., Arnold & Porter LLP, for Motorola, Inc., the intervenor. Guy R. Pietrovito, Esq., and James A. Spangenberg, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST In a negotiated procurement that provided for award on the basis of a price/technical trade-off, the agency's determination that the protester's lower-priced proposal was unacceptable was unreasonable, where the agency's assessment of a significant weakness in the protester's proposal with respect to its proposal of a flatbed scanner was unreasonable and the agency failed to provide meaningful discussions to the protester on this point. DECISION Cogent Systems, Inc. protests the award of a contract to Motorola, Inc. under request for proposals (RFP) No. W9124Q-05-R-AFIS, issued by the Department of the Army for an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to be used by the government of Iraq. Cogent challenges the agency's technical and price evaluation and source selection decision. We sustain the protest. The RFP, issued under a combined synopsis/solicitation for a commercial item in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) part 12.6, provided for the award of a fixed-price contract for a turnkey AFIS for the Rapid Equipping Force (REF) to be used by the Iraqi government.[1] Offerors were informed that the initial baseline system will have a "Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) capability with an added ability to read in transactions [from] CD-ROMs generated by livescan equipment procured under a separate contract." RFP at 2. The contract would also include options for three upgrades to the baseline system. Offerors were provided with a number of documents describing the system and services to be provided, including the SOW, the Requirement Specification for the Iraqi AFIS System, and the Iraqi National Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification (EFTS). Offerors were informed that [t]he initial delivery will be a tenprint AFIS capable of receiving transactions, per the Iraqi-EFTS, on CD-ROMs, storing and matching fingerprints, and outputting Hit and no-Hit reports both as SREs [System Response Electronics] and in paper reports[,] and that later upgrades of the system would provide the capability to process latent prints. RFP, Tab 71D, Requirement Specification for the Iraqi AFIS System, at 2. The solicitation also stated search rates and response times by task; the baseline system was required to be able to process 10,000 tenprint transactions daily. Shorter response times were identified for the upgrade options depending upon the task and priority assigned. Id.