The Government Accountability Office has recommended, in an Aug. 18 decision that upheld a portion of a protest filed by Northrop Grumman Information Technology, that Air Force Space Command go through a new selection process to ascertain the ultimate winner of its Uni-Comm contract, which would consolidate core communication and information technology services currently handled through 24 contracts. AFSPC awarded the new single contract to General Dynamics Information Technology, but the three other competitors—NGIT, L-3 Services, and Lockheed Martin Information Services—filed protests. At that point, AFSPC reviewed the award and, again, gave it to GDIT. After which, NDIT alone filed a new protest. According to GAO, which noted it was “a close competition, AFSPC “failed to properly evaluate” GDIT and NGIT under two Mission Capability subfactors, which it said “reasonably may be regarded as prejudicial to NGIT, notwithstanding NGIT’s higher price.”
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.