“What started out to be Best in Class acquisitions may be turning out to be more like worst in class procurements. There is no denying that when the government says it is going to bundle up a major portion of the IT market and compete it through acquisition vehicles, companies will fight to the death to be one of the awardees...” “CIOSP4, which was released in May 2021, has had to deal with 27 protests that necessitated bidders  revising and/or resubmitting their proposals. Now, awards are planned for November 2022, but it is probably better to say the next tranche of protests will begin in November, and those will delay awards while losers vet their disappointment at GAO and then in the Court of Federal Claims...” “The Polaris protests all deal with the planned evaluation criteria and the vendor self-scoring approach. For Polaris, GSA plans to award points to vendors who can demonstrate experience across the entire IT landscape. In order to win, bidders have to be either one of the biggest players in the IT market or team up with enough other companies so their collective experience makes them score like they are one of the biggest players...” “Hopefully, GSA services MAC will overcome these issues and will have an evaluation scoring threshold that will let best in class bidders win, not just biggest in class...” Read the full article here. Source: Best-in-class, or worst-in-class? -  By Bob Lohfeld, May 13, 2022. Washington Technology.