SSA Failed to Adequately Document Rationale for Improving Awardee’s Past Performance Rating, Undermining Best Value Tradeoff; GAO B-413682.2, The Arcanum Group Inc.

Protest challenging the agency’s price realism analysis is denied, where the agency reasonably assessed inherent risk in proposals with no obligation to compare offerors’ prices to each other; and protest challenging the agency’s best value tradeoff decision is sustained, where the SSA failed to document the rationale for upgrading the awardee’s past performance rating, which was a discriminator in the best value decision.