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This is an opinion by Judge Solomson of the Court of Federal Claims. It may save a potential protester thousands of dollars just by reading it. It takes about 15 minutes to get the idea. 1 Ginn Grp., Inc. v. United States, 159 Fed. Cl. 593, 608 (2022) (alteration in original) (quoting Andersen Consulting v. United States, 959 F.2d 929, 932 (Fed. Cir. 1992)); see also Caddell Constr. Co. v. United States, 129 Fed. Cl. 383, 403–04 (2016). This Court similarly observed in a recent decision that a plaintiff’s “questions” regarding the conduct of a procurement “do not substitute for the evidence necessary to succeed on the merits.” Ahtna Logistics, LLC v. United States, -- Fed. Cl. --, 2022 WL 17480642, at *1 (Fed. Cl. Nov. 28, 2022) (describing “prejudice on the merits” as “an issue, in this Court’s experience, to which plaintiffs all-too-often do not pay sufficient attention, usually at their own peril”). -------------------------------------------------------------- Ekagra Partners, LLC v. U. S. and Paradyme Management, Inc., No. 22-1038C, December 21, 2022

In truth, I didn't know Saturday, December 17, 2022 was Wright Brothers Day. But it was That reminded me of a wonderful and educational piece written by Vern Edwards in 2002 for Wifcon.com. It is titled The True Story of the Wright Brothers' Contract (It’s not what you think.)

In July 2023, Wifcon.com will begin it's 25th year.

The program seeks to provide commercial B2B online shopping capabilities for agency Government Purchase Card (GPC) holders for the purchase of routine, commercial items. The solicitation package closely aligns with the Request for Information released earlier this year under notice ID 47QSCC22N0007, and with the draft RFP released under notice ID 47QSCC22R0028.

House Passes National Defense Authorization Act on 12/8/22. One down, one to go. The Library of Congress cannot even keep of with the paperwork. Let's see if the Senate can pass H. R. 7776 today. I just finished checking and the Senate is not scheduled to be back until 12/12/22.

H. R. 7776 - Water Resources Development Act of 2022 Now it is labeled H. R. 7776 the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 The first bill was for something other than an NDAA. Apparently, H. R. 7776 was highjacked and is planned to be the NDAA for FY 2023. The Chairmen and Ranking Members from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees grabbed H.R. 7900 and S. 4543--two versions of an NDAA--squished them together, hijacked H. R. 7776, amended that bill, and renamed it as the one above. When time is available, conferees are named and they negotiate a conference report and both Houses of Congress vote on it, approve the conference report and send it the White House for signature to make the finished bill a Public Law. H. R. 7776, the agreement between the Chairmen and Ranking Members will probably be substituted for negotiations between conferees of both houses and H. R. 7776 will be passed by both houses. Then off to the White House. There are plenty of perfections to contracting law in Title VIII but H. R. 7776 needs to be passed in about 2 weeks without running into any obstacles. It probably won't get derailed, but I think it's too early to look at any of the bill's provisions.

The Army calls it the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft. Two questions. After you see it, what would you call it? (See it at DefenseNews) How long will it take for the protest to be submitted? Army announces Future Long Range Assault Aircraft contract award.

The Nash & Cibinic Report, Volume 36, Issue 12 By Vernon J. Edwards Addendum by Ralph C. Nash Numerical (“point”) scoring/rating systems have long been used as a proposal evaluation technique. Once upon a time the use of such systems in the source selection process was common. But after a number of bid protest decisions in the 1970s and 1980s involving numerical scores, some agencies began to restrict or even prohibit their use and mandated the use of adjectival and colorrating schemes instead of numbers. Please Read: Numerical Scoring In Source Selection: Lessons To Be Learned

Can we learn something from Albania? See How Albania’s e-complaints system reduces red tape for government suppliers from the Open Contracting Partnership.

In Memory of David A. Klokis Corporal, United States Marine Corps Vietnam February 22, 1949 - January 20, 1987 Our Friend Never Forgotten

Chipper? It's gallows humor.

Vern: Picture a ranch and someone dressed in a clown's outfit monitoring the animal pens. The clown is wearing a placard that says "OFPP Administrator" and walks over to a very large pen filled with nasty, old pigs. The pigs have left a disgusting odor in the pen because they are bunched closely together and no one has cleaned the pen in decades. The clown, newly hired, prepares to open the pen and let the pigs out. From a distance, another person with a "Director, OMB" placard, shouts to the clown, "don't let the pigs out." "There's more coming in." An 18-wheeler shows up next to a wooden runway leading to the large pen. The driver, happy to get rid of the load, opens the door to the 18-wheeler and the new pigs, grunting and snorting, head for the overcrowded pen. The clown shouts to the Director, OMB in the distance: "Why did you let a new load of pigs into the disgusting, smelly, crowded pen." The Director, OMB says: "the new NDAA just passed and those are the new Title VIII pigs ready to join the earlier Title VIII pigs already in the pen." The clown looked in another direction and saw a cloud of dust rising from the feet of a group of people running in another direction. The clown looked at the Director, OMB and shouted: "Who are they?" The Director shouted back: "That's the FAR council members." "Round them up and put them in the pen with the pigs." "They'll know what to do." The Director walked over to his waiting car muttering to himself, "stupid clown, there's always a sucker to take that job."

I did a little calculating. $15,505,407,941 / 1,139 = $13,613,176 obligations per task order (rounded). I know using obligations is not correct but that is close enough. You asked 4 questions. My answers are 1) probably not, 2) probably not, 3) probably not, and 4) not aware of any facts other than my little calculation. I believe Title 10 and 41 as they relate to federal contracting should be obliterated. Here is one itty-bitty part of the contracting law that I especially hate. That authorized the Director of OMB to make mini central suppliers so they could make their own big-box acquisitions and share them with others or compete against others. Here is a question: How many federal agencies does it take to buy a laptop computer?

I did a quick look at the statement of work in the original solicitation. All I could think of was box-store acquisition syndrome. I'll save the self-scoring mechanism for a later date.

It just might be Protests against Soliciation # 75N98121R00001 owned by the Department of Health and Human Services : National Institutes of Health. The solicitation is for "Chief Information Officer - Solutions and Partners 4 (CIO-SP4)." See it at SAM.GOV. Let's check with GAO and count the open protests against the solicitation.

Connected Global Solutions, LLC and American Roll-On Roll-Off Carrier Group Inc. v. U. S. and HomeSafe Alliance, LLC, No. 22-292C, 22-317C, November 15, 2022.

Streamlining Source Selection by Improving the Quality of Evaluation Factors Nash & Cibinic Report, October, 1994 A special column by Vernon J. Edwards, Consultant in Government Contracting Almost everyone involved with Government contracting can tell a horror story about a “best value” source selection that involved the development of a lengthy and costly proposal, about a source selection that took two years to complete, and about a protest that delayed an important project and increased its costs. Legislators, policymakers, and acquisition managers are currently looking for ways to “streamline” the source-selection process. I would suggest that the single most effective thing acquisition managers can do to streamline the best value source-selection process is to improve their choices of evaluation factors for award. (Read special column.) * * * * * Postscript: Streamlining Source Selection by Improving the Quality of Evaluation Factors Nash & Cibinic Report, December, 1994 Ralph C. Nash and John Cibinic, Professors Emeriti of Law, George Washington University Professors Nash and Cibinic received two comments on Vern Edwards' article. One was from Bryan Wilkinson, Director, Compliance Guidelines, Teledyne, Inc. and the second was from Steven Kelman, Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. The Postscript contains the two comments and the Professors' response. (Read Postcript)

This week Vern was in looking around in his library when he found this study: -------------------------------------------- The full 776 page study is available at Google Books. The Contents page of the study contains links that you can click for the different chapters. Vern mentions 2 chapters from the study. Chapter V: The Contracting Workforce, contains a 12-page section devoted to the contracting officer. He highlighted some text from the chapter about what Congress thought of contracting officers in 1990. He explains that the study is out-of-date in some ways but it is still revealing about what Congress thought of contracting officers in those days: “The contracting officer is the fulcrum of the acquisition process.” and Chapter VII, Professionalism of the Acquisition Workforce, is a 50-page discussion of the state of professionalism, education, and training, begins with a discussion of the concept of professionalism.

Using AI to Reduce Performance Risk in U.S. Procurement GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 44, 2022 GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No 44, 2022 The Regulatory Review (June 29, 2022) Jessica Tillipman, George Washington University - Law School Courtesy of the Social Science Research Network Published with permission of the author Please Read: Using AI to Reduce Performance Risk in U.S. Procurement

Government Contracts Law as an Instrument of National Power: A Perspective from the Department of the Air Force 51 Public Contract Law Journal 553 (2022) Daniel Schoeni U.S. Air Force JAG Corps September 28, 2022 Courtesy of SSRN Please Read Government Contracts Law as an Instrument of National Power: A Perspective from the Department of the Air Force

I've been interrupted by my dogs every time I sit down to write something. There have been numerous individuals who have published their writings on Wifcon.com and they have all benefitted from publishing their articles here. As I have mentioned, h-t-h's article that was publised well over a decade ago, was the most popular article in September 2022. The articles published on Wifcon.com have staying power. If they are good, they are read over and over again each month. You have an international audience here. USE IT. It's free.

When Wifcon.com was about 7 years old, Vern had submitted a number of articles to Wifcon.com for publication. Way back then, his articles were viewed tens of thousands of times. I am confident to say that after 24 years his articles have been viewed well over a million times on Wifcon.com.

h_t_h: In the normal course of Wifcon.com business, I noticed an old article published on Wifcon.com from many years ago. I noticed it because It was the most popular article viewed on Wifcon.com in September 2022. h_2_h ---- it was one of your articles. I will add more to this note at a later date.

Joel: Here's more about the Sino-American Joint Fighter. Did hackers break into a top-secret USAF program? F-35 secrets now showing up in China’s stealth fighter. US reexamines cybersecurity after Russian hack Theft of F-35 design data is helping U.S. adversaries -Pentagon These articles have various dates.