“Accenture Federal Services lost yet another protest in its effort to hold on to a contract operating the Healthcare.gov exchange that connects health insurance applicants to coverage available under the Affordable Care Act.”
“According to the Government Accountability Office, which adjudicates bid protests, Accenture’s protest was denied because it was looking to alter the terms of the solicitation to favor its own incumbency…”
“CMS picked Deloitte to take over the contract valued at just under $400 million in November 2019. Accenture protested in December and Deloitte was again awarded the contract in February 2020. That led to another protest and, eventually, CMS issued an amendment to the solicitation in Nov. 17, with proposals due on Dec. 7 at 2pm. According to the timeline provided by GAO’s decision, Accenture filed its protest — with certain arguments redacted — just a few hours before proposals were due.”
“Accenture objected to the solicitation’s criteria for evaluating contractor experience. The company argued that the operation of a state-based exchange did not qualify a bidder to run the larger federal exchange.”
“In November, CMS amended its solicitation to note that systems qualify as being of a similar size to the Healthcare.gov system if it “requires a similar amount of work to build and operate,” even if it processes a smaller volume of transactions…”
“CMS, according to the GAO decision, felt that the Accenture protest was made to ‘diminish the competitiveness of offerors whose experience is limited to operating state-based health insurance exchanges.'”
“GAO took the point. ‘Accenture is not prejudiced by this provision — other than the ‘prejudice’ of potentially facing more meaningful competition,’ Armstrong wrote in his decision…” Read the full article here.
Source: Accenture rebuffed again in Healthcare.gov protest – By Adam Mazmanian, February 2, 2021. FCW.
Accenture Federal Services was named to the list of NXT UP firms poised to make big waves in the Federal sector in 2020 and for years to come.
