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bility to the information, by providing copies of documents as appendices or
references to obtain the documents, such as on the Internet.
As with the administrative review, the tool used by the government to evalu-
ate the vendor’s proposal for the mandatory technical and functional require-
ments probably will be a form with the evaluators recording information and
assessing whether the proposal qualifies for continued review.
A word of caution: unlike the initial administrative requirements review, for
which the vendor essentially controls whether the proposal meets the require-
ments (i.e., the vendor assumes the responsibility to ensure timely delivery and
a completed proposal), the government’s decisions in establishing the manda-
tory technical and functional requirements could be subject to scrutiny or chal-
lenge by a vendor. One possible basis for a challenge is an allegation that a
mandatory technical requirement was selected to favor or disqualify a vendor.
Defending against these types of challenges ties back to the government’s initial
analysis of its business needs and substantiating the decisions made early in the
development of the procurement.

9.7.4.3 Technical and Functional Evaluation
The next tier in the RFP might be the technical and functional evaluation of
the System, which is often given a weighted score. The government has deter-
mined that these elements are not mandatory to the AFIS procurement, but
are important in differing degrees. There are many different ways to structure
this section and to indicate the degree of importance. One common way is
to ask a series of questions about the desired functionality, which can be
responded to with yes/no answers and supplemented with additional informa-
tion. The government indicates the relative importance of these factors in
the aggregate, e.g., the proposal has 70% of the features inquired about, or
individually, e.g., a given feature is stated to be high, medium, or low in
importance.
This is a difficult section to prepare. It reflects a series of assumptions about
the operating environment and requires a thorough analysis of anticipated
needs and how an application will be employed. If the AFIS acquisition is a new
type of processing, it may be difficult to assess the relative degree of importance
of a feature.

9.7.4.4 Testing
Depending on the nature of the AFIS acquisition, there may also be a testing
or benchmarking component built in. From a legal perspective, it is critical that
any testing be conducted in a uniform manner for every vendor. Such unifor-
mity helps to instill confidence that the process is fair and no vendor was given
an advantage over another. For example, the governmental agency can select