Palantir USG, Inc. v. United States

Palantir filed a pre-award bid protest, challenging the Army’s solicitation for Distributed Common Ground System-Army Increment 2 (DCGS-A2), the Army’s primary system for processing and disseminating multisensor intelligence and weather information. The solicitation seeks a single contractor to be the system data architect, developer, and integrator of DCGS-A2. Palantir’s complaint alleges that the Army violated the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) 10 U.S.C. 2377(c) by failing to determine whether its needs could be met by commercial items before issuing the contested solicitation. The Claims Court agreed. The Federal Circuit affirmed the entry of an injunction, rejecting arguments that the trial court erroneously added requirements to section 2377, including that the Army was required to “fully investigate,” “fully explore,” “examine,” and “evaluate” whether all or part of its requirements could be satisfied by commercially available items, such as Palantir’s product. FASA requires an agency to use the results of market research to “determine” whether there are commercial items that “meet the agency’s requirements; could be modified to meet the agency’s requirements; or could meet the agency’s requirements if those requirements were modified to a reasonable extent.” While the trial court’s thorough opinion sometimes uses words other than “determine,” read in context, those words were intended to be synonymous with “determine.” View "Palantir USG, Inc. v. United States" on Justia Law