10 U.S.C. § 3206: Planning and solicitation requirements

specify the agency’s needs and solicit bids or proposals in a manner designed to achieve full and open competition for the procurement; use advance procurement planning and market research; and develop specifications in such manner as is necessary to obtain full and open competition with due regard to the nature of the property or services to be acquired. consistent with the provisions of chapter 137 legacy provisions, permit full and open competition; and include restrictive provisions or conditions only to the extent necessary to satisfy the needs of the agency or as authorized by law. function, so that a variety of products or services may qualify; performance, including specifications of the range of acceptable characteristics or of the minimum acceptable standards; or design requirements. all significant factors and significant subfactors which the head of the agency reasonably expects to consider in evaluating sealed bids (including price) or competitive proposals (including cost or price, cost-related or price-related factors and subfactors, and noncost-related or nonprice-related factors and subfactors); and the relative importance assigned to each of those factors and subfactors; and a statement that sealed bids will be evaluated without discussions with the bidders; and the time and place for the opening of the sealed bids; or either a statement that the proposals are intended to be evaluated with, and award made after, discussions with the offerors, or a statement that the proposals are intended to be evaluated, and award made, without discussions with the offerors (other than discussions conducted for the purpose of minor clarification) unless discussions are determined to be necessary; and the time and place for submission of proposals. shall (except as provided in paragraph (3)) clearly establish the relative importance assigned to the evaluation factors and subfactors, including the quality of the product or services to be provided (including technical capability, management capability, prior experience, and past performance of the offeror); shall (except as provided in paragraph (3)) include cost or price to the Federal Government as an evaluation factor that must be considered in the evaluation of proposals; and significantly more important than cost or price; approximately equal in importance to cost or price; or significantly less important than cost or price. The regulations implementing paragraph (1)(C) may not define the terms “significantly more important” and “significantly less important” as specific numeric weights that would be applied uniformly to all solicitations or a class of solicitations. cost or price to the Federal Government need not, at the Government’s discretion, be considered under paragraph (1)(B) as an evaluation factor for the contract award; and the disclosure requirement of paragraph (1)(C) shall not apply; and cost or price to the Federal Government shall be considered in conjunction with the issuance pursuant to section 3406(c) of this title of a task or delivery order under any contract resulting from the solicitation. is determined to be a responsible source; submits a proposal that conforms to the requirements of the solicitation; and the contracting officer has no reason to believe would likely offer other than fair and reasonable pricing. Paragraph (3) shall not apply to multiple task or delivery order contracts if the solicitation provides for sole source task or delivery order contracts pursuant to section 8(a) of the Small Business Act ( 15 U.S.C. 637(a) ). providing additional information in a solicitation, including numeric weights for all evaluation factors and subfactors on a case-by-case basis; or stating in a solicitation that award will be made to the offeror that meets the solicitation’s mandatory requirements at the lowest cost or price. The head of an agency, in issuing a solicitation for a contract to be awarded using sealed bid procedures, may not include in such solicitation a clause providing for the evaluation of prices for options to purchase additional property or services under the contract unless the head of the agency has determined that there is a reasonable likelihood that the options will be exercised. establishment and enforcement of secure coding practices; management of supply chain risks and third-party software sources and component risks; security of the software development environment; secure deployment, configuration, and installation processes; and an associated vulnerability management plan and identification of tools that will be applied to achieve an appropriate level of security. procedures for the security review of code; and other procedures necessary to fully implement the pilot program required under section 875 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 ( Public Law 115–91 ; 10 U.S.C. 2223 note). The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment shall develop the requirements and procedures described under subsections (a) and (b) in coordination with the efforts of the Department of Defense to develop new cybersecurity and program protection policies and guidance that are focused on cybersecurity in the context of acquisition and program management and on safeguarding information.”