In its January 2016 decision in Arctic Slope Missions Services, LLC, the GAO found that the Department of Justice gave preferential treatment to a professional support services incumbent and placed unfair emphasis on past corporate experience. As the GAO stated, the government “must treat all offerors equally and evaluate their proposals even-handedly against the solicitation’s requirements and evaluation criteria.” The GAO found that the evaluators gave past experience marks outside of the relevant evaluation category and gave the benefit of the doubt to the incumbent while scoring other proposals more narrowly and strictly. It ordered a re-evaluation due to the resulting unfair advantage.
