Originally Posted by
SATTSO
This is not unique to AIT. TSA employees different types of ETD, x-ray, baggage EDS, and so on. There are multiple reasons for this, but to put plainly, it is the policy of the federal government.
This has been policy for years, and I am sure there are exceptions allowed. However, as quoted from a March 4, 2009, "Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, Subject: Government Contracting", Obama said:
"Excessive reliance by executive agencies on sole-source contracts ... creates a risk that taxpayer funds will be spent on contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, subject to misuse, or otherwise not well designed to serve the needs of the Federal Government or the interests of the American taxpayer. "
Government agencies are encouraged to contract out to different companies. As to whether or not such a policy is actually effective is another story.
FYI, I am a certified acquisition professional, as the federal government defines it. That's not what I was asking, but thank you for quoting Acquisition 1.01. The other equipment you describe were procured, most likely, under an IDIQ-type contract, in which there were many sources. A lot of them may have been procured off the GSA schedule.
The scanners were procured under a design & development contract before production contracts were issued. There are significant non-recurring engineering and life-cycle cost considerations that don't exist when buying stuff off the GSA schedule. Since the Recovery.gov data clearly shows that the x-ray scanners were bought under sole-source contracts, I'm having a hard time reconciling how anyone could have written a JOFOC that made it through legal approval (Francine) when there was a proven competitor who met all requirements (L-3). FYI, as far as I could tell, there were no L-3 machines bought using stimulus funds.