[Protest of OPM Solicitation]

A firm protested a solicitation issued by the Office of Personnel Management for teleprocessing services. The protester asserted that: (1) the solicitation evaluation criteria did not adequately explain how the cost components would be evaluated; (2) the benchmark test called for substantial manual input by machine operators, which did not measure the true system costs; (3) the solicitation evaluation formula assigned 60 points to technical criteria and 40 points to cost criteria, which was inappropriate since all terms and conditions had already been negotiated with the General Services Administration; and (4) the technical evaluation criteria included response time rather than equipment speed. Bid protest procedures state that a protest alleging apparent improprieties in a solicitation must be filed prior to the closing date for receipt of initial proposals. The protest was filed more than 2 months after the closing date and was therefore untimely. Accordingly, the protest was dismissed.