Northrop Grumman has joined Unisys in protesting TSA's Infrastructure Technology Program. Unisys filed in early July, followed by Northrop Grumman on July 21. Both companies were left off the list of finalists eligible to bid on the contract, worth $2 billion.

I will be watching this protest closely for a number of reasons. It's another data point in a growing trend of protests, and I'm interested in seeing how the outcome motivates other contractors who may be considering protesting as part of a business strategy. Most importantly, this contract is going through the EAGLE contract vehicle, and will be the first task order protest under GAO jurisdiction since the change in rules allowing protests for task orders greater than $10 million. This is also the first time that GAO will hear protests of TSA procurements - TSA was made subject to the FAR starting June 23, 2008.

TSA officials have said in the past that, although the agency's procurement was under the auspices of the FAA Acquisition Management System (AMS), acquisition officials followed many of the FAR's guidelines. However, lawmakers made a lot of noise about what they called TSA's "inconsistency in its acquisition environment," which led to DHS amending its procurement regulations to pull TSA under FAR as part of the TSA Procurement Reform Act.

Although the details of Northrop Grumman's and Unisys' protests are not yet known (other than "possible flaws in the conduct of the procurement"), the alleged "wasteful spending, mismanagement, and confusion" that inspired Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA) to introduce the TSA Procurement Reform Act don't bode well for TSA.

Could this be a case of a steep learning curve causing some protestable missteps?