In the August 20th issue of FCW, “Government Consultant” Robert Guerra goes on for a full page on how unpatriotic the protest of the AKO contract is. Wrapping himself in the flag, he raves about how since we are a country at war, the groups protesting the AKO should put aside the protest of a contract they feel was improperly awarded to Lockheed Martin.

Bob’s assessment of the situation is confused and misleading. He suggests that somehow the AKO portal is critical to the war effort and is somehow crippled by the protest action. He could not be further from the truth. In point of fact the AKO portal is fully operational, completely functional and has been for years. The only thing stalled here is the ability of the Lockheed team to perform and bill the Government for efforts while the protest is pending. I for one fail to see how this hampers the work of the Army and Department of Defense in the war effort.

It is the right of any vendor to protest an award they feel is improper or made based on incomplete or incorrect information. To suggest that the protesting vendors set aside their issues with this award due to some imagined dependance of the war effort particularly with respect to AKO’s simple vendor transition in an ongoing IT contract is misleading and foolish.

The Government itself should be thankful when a vendor is willing to stick their neck out and point up problems with evaluations as in many cases it can result better decisions in these contracting situations. I suspect that the DLA folks involved with the EDC outsourcing contract are secretly wishing that Lockheed had protested the award they made to HP since that contract is a mess at this point.

I am unsure why Robert Guerra has an axe to grind on this particular contract but I suspect that there is more here than a good citizen speaking his mind.

Guerra: Drop the protest