“One thing government contracting shops are sticklers for is receiving bids by the stated deadline. Two days or two seconds late, and would-be contractors are out of luck. That’s true even if the government’s own IT systems screw up or cause the lateness. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked about the latest test case with Smith Pachter McWhorter procurement attorney Joe Petrillo…
Joseph Petrillo: The situation arose in the context of a procurement of audio visual support to be used by the Food and Drug Administration. And one offeror, VERSA Integrated Solutions, submitted its proposal as required by email to the contracting officer, prior to the deadline, sent out prior to the deadline. When it didn’t hear back after a while, it got in touch with the contracting officer and asked about the status and was told its proposal hadn’t been received. So they checked their logs and sent in logs from their server indicating that they had in fact sent that.
Tom Temin: The company sent in its logs.
Joseph Petrillo: The company sent its logs. So when the contracting officer got that information from VERSA, it asked its IT department what happened. And a week later, the IT department reported that, in fact, the email had been received by the government’s system before the deadline, but it had been quarantined, because the proposal that had been attached contained macros. And that was the, you know that that was fatal under the government system…” Read the full interview here.
Source: Government IT glitches can keep contract bids from being received on time – By Tom Temin, May 18, 2022. Federal News Network.
