[Protest of Department of the Treasury Contract Award]

A firm protested the award of a contract by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. The protester contended that the awardee's bid was nonresponsive since it did not contain evidence of its previous satisfactory job performance as required by the solicitation. GAO stated that experience and capability are matters of responsibility, not responsiveness; therefore, regardless of the solicitation's language, it was not necessary for the awardee to submit such information with its bid. As a general rule, GAO does not review affirmative determinations of responsibility unless fraud on the part of procuring officials is shown or the solicitation contains definitive responsibility criteria which allegedly have been misapplied. There was no allegation of fraud, but the protester did allege that the Center had misapplied the solicitation's criteria. The record showed that the awardee had submitted a list of references to the agency and that the information received from said references indicated that the awardee's previous contract performance was good. This is sufficient to satisfy the GAO review standard, since the relative quality of the evidence is a matter for the judgment of the contracting officer, not GAO. Accordingly, the protest was summarily denied.