Automated Source Selection Scoring & FAR Compliance

Technology is changing the world at an accelerating rate. However, federal agencies' public procurement and compliance tools have remained relatively unaffected by technology when compared to other industries. If Government agencies continue to lag behind in their compliance efforts, then Government agencies' risk exposure to a specific type of lawsuit called a bid-protest will remain static. Bid-protests cause time delays for government projects and cost contractors and the Government substantial amounts of money each year. Government agencies should use technology to standardize and automate their source selection scoring procedures in order to improve their regulatory compliance and gain cost-efficient advantages.This paper provides an algorithm that standardizes and automates Government agencies' source selection scoring systems. Scholars have suggested different approaches to improve the source selection process that focus on regulatory changes to the structure of the acquisition process. However, those suggestions fail to consider how technology may be used to improve source selection and regulatory compliance within the current structure of the acquisition process. This paper takes an informatics based approach to reducing the occurrence of common compliance failures that arise from defective source selection procedures. Government agencies may drastically reduce the occurrence of compliance failures and resulting bid-protests by adopting the analytical framework proposed in this paper