[Request for Reconsideration of Denial of Protest Against an IRS Bid Rejection]

A firm requested reconsideration of a decision denying its protest against the rejection of its proposal under an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) solicitation for the lease of computer hardware. IRS had rejected the protester's bid because it believed that the firm had fine tuned its equipment between the first and second benchmark tests in violation of the solicitation specifications. In rejecting the firm's protest, GAO agreed with the IRS assertions that the equipment had been fine tuned between benchmarks. However, upon reviewing the protest, GAO discovered that significant changes were made in running the second benchmark that made any comparison of results to the first benchmark invalid. Accordingly, the protest was sustained and GAO recommended that IRS not renew the awarded contract for future option years, but instead resolicit its subsystem requirements for those years.