I’m no technology whiz by any stretch, but when I worked on Capitol Hill before law school, my boss made me the office systems administrator, responsible for troubleshooting computer and tech issues. Occasionally, I had to call in outside help, but most of the time I relied on that old standby, control-alt-delete, to “fix” my colleague’s computers. Once, when I was in a meeting, a colleague called me back to the office in a panic, because the copier wasn’t working. The problem, which I quickly diagnosed: it wasn’t plugged in.
I bring this up because sometimes, even very smart people like my Capitol Hill colleagues are not so great with technology. The same is true in the government contracting arena. No matter how wonderful a proposal a contractor writes, it does no good if technology problems prevent it from reaching the procuring agency on time. As agencies turn more and more to higher-tech methods for obtaining contractor’s proposals, like the FedConnect system, it is critical that contractors understand how the technology works, as one contractor learned the hard way in a recent GAO bid protest decision.