CORRECTION March 11, 9:00 a.m.: This story has been amended to reflect the fact that GAO has rejected Savantage's protest.

UPDATE March 10, 1:10 p.m.: DHS released a statement on the GAO decision, which we've now placed in this article. A Savantage representative also returned our call in order to decline comment. 

The Government Accountability Office upheld March 9 a protest against the Homeland Security Department's award of a $450 million contract to CACI to implement a controversial enterprise resource planning system.

DHS announced it had awarded Arlington, Va.-based CACI the contract to implement the ERP--known as Transformation and Systems Consolidation--on Nov. 19; two protestors, Global Computer Enterprises of Reston, Va. and Savantage Financial Services of Rockville, Md., filed with the GAO that month. The GAO has upheld GCE's protest but dismissed Savantage's.

A senior GAO bid protest attorney said in an interview that it still needs a few weeks to edit the decisions before releasing them to the public.

DHS spokesman Chris Ortman said the department is "working with GAO and the other parties to finalize a public version of the decision, and we are currently assessing GAO's findings and recommendations to determine the way forward."

Attempts to reach CACI were unsuccessful; one CACI executive with responsibility over civilian sales said, when contacted by phone, "I don't know what you're talking about" and hung up. Savantage also declined to comment and attempts to reach GCE were not sucessful.

Agencies aren't legally bound to follow GAO protest decisions, although in practice, they almost always do. From federal fiscal year 2000 through 2009, agencies ignored the GAO exactly five times, which amounts almost to .04 percent of all resolved cases.

DHS's attempt to get an ERP contractor has assumed epic proportions. The GAO's decision is just the latest in a string of reversals for the department dating back to 2008. In that year, the Court of Federal Claims sided with a Savantage in a lawsuit the company filed on the grounds that the original TASC request for proposals constituted an improper sole-source procurement, because it required migration to an Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) or SAP system.

TASC has also come under Office of Management and Budget scrutiny, with DHS last year promising as a result of OMB reviews to implement TASC first within the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and thereafter only to other components that have "an identified critical business need." 

DHS auditors have also cast a critical eye on the project, issuing a July 2010 report in which they said that DHS underestimated the program's cost, hadn't completed an acquisition program baseline and lacked a concept of operations.

Congress, too, hasn't been missing from the mix, with Rep,. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), then chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, practically urging the program's cancellation in September 2010.'

For more:

- go to the GAO bid protest docket search page - Global Computer Enterprise's file number is 404597.1 and Savantage's is 404597.2.

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