DOE's Alcohol Fuels Awards Process Resulted in Questionable Award Selections and Limited Small Business Success.
Abstract
DOE made two rounds of awards for alcohol fuels feasibility studies and cooperative agreements. Certain events which occurred in the process DOE used to select awardees cast doubt over whether the best proposals were selected for award. In making selections, DOE frequently disregarded the technical evaluations of its proposal evaluators and selected many lower ranking proposals instead of those ranked much higher. DOE made excessive and sometimes inconsistent use of nontechnical objectives, set forth in program policy factors, in overriding these technical evaluations. In addition, during one competition a proposal evaluator having a minority viewpoint on the proposal evaluator team altered the team's consensus ratings of cost and business management factors prior to award selections. To enhance the integrity of the process for selecting awardees in future competitions, DOE needs to establish guidelines spelling our the manner in which program policy factors should be applied in the selection process and setting forth a mechanism for dealing with minority viewpoints during the evaluation process.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 21, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA106665
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office