Protest Denial Decision Released: $249M National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Office of the CISO CyberSecurity Support Services

GAO Case: B-421640.3,B-421640.4,B-421640.5,B-421640.6

Digest

1. Protests challenging agency’s evaluation of proposals under the technical/management and price factors are denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation.
2. Protests challenging agency’s evaluation of past performance are denied where the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the solicitation’s criteria, or the protesters did not establish that they were competitively prejudiced by the agency’s actions.
3. Protests challenging agency’s best‑value tradeoff are denied where the agency’s tradeoff was reasonable, adequately documented, and consistent with the terms of the solicitation.

Discussion

The protesters generally challenge the agency’s evaluation of proposals and resulting source selection decision. We note that the protesters raise many collateral arguments. While our decision does not specifically address every argument, we have reviewed all the arguments and conclude that none provide a basis to sustain the protests.[7] We discuss several representative issues below.

Castalia challenges the agency’s evaluation of RiVidium’s proposal under the technical/management factor. Castalia Protest at 19; Castalia Comments at 3‑4. In this regard, Castalia argues that the agency’s evaluation was inconsistent because it assigned RiVidium’s proposal a rating of outstanding under the computer network exploitation subfactor and a rating of outstanding under the cybersecurity risk management subfactor despite assessing the same number of moderate and slight strengths under each subfactor. Castalia Comments at 4. Castalia also argues that RiVidium’s overall technical/management rating of outstanding was unreasonable because the agency did not assess RiVidium’s proposal a significant strength under either of the two most important subfactors. Id.

The agency responds that it reasonably assessed these ratings in accordance with the RFP. COS/MOL, B-421640.4 at 51‑52. The agency contends that Castalia’s arguments unreasonably focus on the adjectival ratings rather than the agency’s detailed consideration of the underlying bases for the ratings, which the agency documented in its evaluation …

Decision

Spry Methods, Inc., a small business of McLean, Virginia, and Castalia Systems, LLC, a small business of Tampa, Florida, protest the award of a contract to RiVidium, Inc., d/b/a TripleCyber, a small business of Vienna, Virginia, under request for proposals (RFP) No. HM0476-21-R-0025, issued by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for cybersecurity capabilities and services in support of NGA’s chief information security officer. The protesters challenge various aspects of the agency’s evaluation of proposals and the resulting source selection decision.

We deny the protests.

Read the decision here.

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