FAA Procurement

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) planned acquisition for its Computer Resources Nucleus (CORN) project, intended to replace FAA general-purpose data-processing resources with contractor-owned and -operated computer resources.

GAO found that: (1) an independent review by information consultants recommended restructuring the CORN solicitation and improving FAA information management; (2) the new FAA CORN solicitation resolved key technical and procurement-related concerns raised by GAO, an independent review, and the General Services Administration (GSA), and was ready to proceed through the acquisition stage; (3) at the time of the review, FAA had identified actions to improve its overall information resources management, but had not yet decided on a course of action; (4) GSA concluded that major CORN issues had been resolved; (5) the revised specifications would encourage competition by substantially reducing vendors' risks and removing an unnecessarily restrictive system specification; (6) FAA expected the revised specifications to result in technical benefits and cost savings; and (7) one vendor asked FAA for reimbursement of costs it incurred in preparing a proposal in response to the original solicitation, but at the time of the review, FAA had not responded to the protest and claim.