CIYIS, LLC (B-423146.2)

You should not care.

Category: Experience, IDIQ, technically acceptable

Date: 17 November 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423146.2

CIYIS, a small business, protests the Navy's decision not to award it a contract under a multiple-award IDIQ solicitation for Microsoft IT services. The RFP contemplated awards to all technically acceptable offerors without a price tradeoff. CIYIS's proposal was rated unacceptable under the organizational experience factor after receiving one weakness, two significant weaknesses, and three deficiencies across six key areas including data and AI, infrastructure, and security.

CIYIS argued the agency misunderstood its proposal and applied the recency criteria arbitrarily. GAO disagreed. The solicitation required offerors to demonstrate breadth, depth, and relevance of organizational experience since January 2019 across six key areas, with up to three pages per reference to explain relevance. CIYIS submitted only about one and a half pages for its first reference and one page for its second.

For key area 2 (data and AI), the agency found CIYIS cited a single, extremely limited example of relevant experience limited to architecting/design activities.

For key area 6 (security), CIYIS provided only two sentences.

CIYIS did not explain in its proposal how its experience related to specific PWS requirements. Offerors bear the burden of submitting well-written proposals with adequate detail.

The protest is denied.

Digest

Protest challenging agency evaluation of protester's technical proposal is denied where the record reflects that the evaluation was reasonable and consistent with the terms of the solicitation.