Agency uses 2023 authority to justify a sole-source award to Palantir to move its GARNET platform into production. A corrective action at the Government Accountability Office usually means a protester gets a second chance to compete for a contract. But in BAE Systems’ challenge to a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency award, the “correction” is simply a new legal justification for giving the same contract to the same company: Palantir.
Palantir is the incumbent on a program called GARNET, a platform the company built that intelligence analysts can use to build data analysis tools. Palantir developed the program with the Army Research Lab through an other transaction authority process.
The platform is now ready to move into a production phase, and the NGA awarded the follow-on contract to Palantir, but BAE objected to the award because the agency didn’t compete the contract.
Under 10 U.S.C. 3204(a)(1), the government can award a sole source contract when there is no other source and no other solution that could meet the requirements.
BAE challenged the award, and in its corrective action, the NGA has switched its justification to another law – the relatively new 10 U.S.C. § 4022(f), which went on the books with the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. It allows defense agencies, including the NGA, to award production contracts following an OTA pilot, without conducting a competition, provided the original OTA was competed.
With its corrective action, the NGA is using this OTA authority to award a follow-on contract for Palantir to implement the GARNET platform.
As part of the corrective action, the NGA is also reviewing the scope and duration of the contract to promote future competition.
BAE can still protest this new award, but its attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
The GARNET program has four requirements that NGA wants integrated into a single platform:
- Integration of artificial intelligence and object-based production
- Front-end geospatial user interface
- Rapid deployability
- Edge hardware support for disconnected users
The contract has a one-year base and four one-year options. The value has not been disclosed.
]]>
