Devis, one of the three unsuccessful bidders, said GSA’s decision may contradict an August 2006 ruling of the Court of Federal Claims. Devis said it will intervene in a protest filed by Information Sciences Corp., which alleges that GSA, once again, did not properly evaluate bids for the FedBizOpps contract.

Devis’ lawyer Robert Ryland a partner at Kirkland and Ellis, said given that GSA should have reconsidered its competitive range decision.

 “In addition, GSA told Devis at its debriefing that contractor risk was not a determining factor in the award decision, despite the fact that a majority of the evaluation panel found the Symplicity proposal to be “unacceptable” and offering “little confidence” of successful performance,” he added.

“The government still does not have a rational basis for awarding this contract or the procedure they followed where they chose not to hold discussions on proposals that were 2 1/2 years old,” said Bill Shook, ISC’s attorney and partner at Kirkpatrick and Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis. “We have a violation of the procurement regulations that requires you to establish a competitive range only if you hold discussions, and they did not do that.”

A GSA spokesman defended the agency’s decision to award the contract to Symplicity once again but would not answer specific questions about why GSA reached that conclusion.

“Evaluation panels review contract proposals and make nonbinding recommendations to contracting officials or Source Selection Authorities, who decide which offers represent the best value to American taxpayers while providing the services needed to fulfill the contracts,” the spokesman said in an e-mail statement. “While the Court of Federal Claims found that GSA properly evaluated the vendors’ offers, per the judge’s direction, GSA appointed a new Source Selection Authority to review the technical and price evaluations and determined that Symplicity offered the best value for American taxpayers.”