sign pen business document

Here at GovConBrief, we’re on the record as being heavily in favor of debriefings. Though this blog wasn’t around, I can promise you we were watching with great interest back when the 2018 National Defense Authorization A instructed the Department of Defense to provide contractors with enhanced debriefings under certain circumstances.

The NDAA called for a few key enhancements as opposed to FAR 15.506 debriefings, most of which the DOD enacted right away. To my eyes, the biggest enhancement called for by the NDAA was one of the few that DOD chose not to enact immediately: giving contractors access to a redacted copy of the agency’s source selection decision document.

The source selection document generally provides a summary of the entire procurement. It describes the evaluation of each proposal—noting strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies—and concludes with the source selection decision.

Entire protests turn on the production and contents of this document. Sometimes the document confirms what the protester always suspected, that it had been treated unfairly and its proposal miss-evaluated. Sometimes it makes absolutely clear that the protester is wrong and that the protest has no merit.

Either way, it benefits all to get access to this document earlier rather than later. It gives a potential protester a clear understanding of how the agency viewed its proposal during the competition. That can help prevent the dreaded “fishing expedition” protest—a protest designed to get documents in the hopes that they lead to successful protest grounds.

Unfortunately, although Congress called for this change in December 2017, only last month did the DOD finally get around to publishing a proposed rule that would implement it. The DOD is taking comments on the rule until July 19.

Of course, it’s not perfect. It only mandates the production of the decision document when the award is worth more than $100 million. Small and nontraditional defense contractors would have to ask for a copy if the award is valued between $10 million and $100 million.

Also, the document produced will be redacted of all confidential information. Redacting can be more art than science. Here’s hoping that those doing the redacting resist the urge to go overboard. An over-redacted source selection document can defeat the whole purpose.

Since it’s not official yet, we’ll hold off on the champagne, but here’s hoping this rule goes in to effect sooner rather than later.

We’ll keep an ear to the ground. In the meantime, if you have any questions about debriefings, feel free to contact us.

DOD’s Enhanced Debriefings are Finally (Maybe) Going to Include the Decision Document was last modified: June 15th, 2021 by Matthew Moriarty