Improprieties in the Award of an Army/GPO Contract for Printing-Related Services (Project 600-S)

GAO discussed its investigation of a procurement that the Army and the Government Printing Office (GPO) conducted for electronic publishing services. GAO noted that: (1) GPO terminated the awarded contract due to an unspecified technical error in the procurement process; (2) GPO and the Army did not conduct the procurement in accordance with the Automatic Data Processing Equipment Act, which required them to obtain a delegation of procurement authority from the General Services Administration; (3) the Army allowed the awardee to test some of its equipment prior to its benchmark test, which gave it more time to complete the benchmark than any other bidder; (4) the Army eliminated a benchmark requirement that the awardee was unable to meet; (5) an Army official changed the benchmark evaluation scores, to the awardee's benefit; (6) an Army member of the technical evaluation team was attempting to obtain a job with the awardee's parent company; (7) government evaluation personnel accepted refreshments from prospective contractors; and (8) GPO improperly allowed the awardee to reduce its bid price on two occasions.