Publisher's Synopsis
One of the major tenets of acquisition reform is that government agencies should be as open and forthcoming as possible in dealing with potential contractors. Increased communication is seen as one of the keys to improve the acquisition process. An important vehicle for government-contractor communication is the post-award debriefing. A post-award debriefing is a meeting with government procurement personnel at the request of an unsuccessful offeror. In the meeting, the government representatives explain why the unsuccessful offeror did not receive the contract.A widely held belief in government acquisition circles is that many protests have been filed simply because unsuccessful offerors have not been fully informed of the facts surrounding the contract award decision. Acquisition reform legislation has attempted to address this problem by mandating more timely and complete post-award debriefings that provide substantive information concerning the basis for the award. The theory is that more information in the post-award debriefing will lead to less protest by unsuccessful offerors.The primary objective of this research is to determine whether changes to the post-award debriefing process mandated by the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 (FASA) have indeed resulted in fewer bid protests. In addition, other potential effects of acquisition reform legislation on the post-award debriefing process will be investigated.
