[Request for Reconsideration]

A firm requested reconsideration of a GAO decision which denied its protest against the Navy's source selection procedure and contract award and found that the Navy did not err in: (1) deciding that the technical proposals of the awardee and the protester were equal, and (2) awarding the contract to the firm proposing the lowest total evaluated cost. The protester contended that GAO had not previously considered that the contracting officer: (1) acted in bad faith by deceptively editing the Naval Electronic Systems Engineering Center's (NESEC) technical recommendations, and (2) failed to record why the proposals were scored technically equal aside from the point-score comparison. GAO found that the contracting officer did not deceptively edit the technical recommendations, but had only sought NESEC's assistance to ascertain whether an award to the protester could be justified at a price higher than that of the equal technical offeror. GAO also found no merit to the contention that the contracting officer was obligated to record why the proposals were scored technically equal aside from the point-score comparison, because the subject matter of the procurement was such that numerical scoring was sufficient to record the Navy's assessment of the contending proposals' technical merit. Since there was no showing that the earlier decision was based on errors of fact or law, the prior decision was affirmed.