Best-Value Decision
The SSA shall select the source whose proposal offers the best value to the Government in accordance with established criteria in Section M or equivalent solicitation provision (see FAR Part 12).
This best-value decision shall be based on a comparative assessment of proposals against all source selection criteria in the solicitation, considering recommendations and minority opinions presented to the SSA. While the SSA may use reports and analyses prepared by others, the source selection decision shall represent the SSA's independent judgment.
The SSA shall document the supporting rationale in the SSDD.
An SSDD shall be prepared for all source selections; shall reflect the SSA's independent, integrated, comparative assessment and decision; shall include the rationale for any business judgments- tradeoffs made or relied on by the SSA (e.g., including benefits associated with additional costs); and shall be included in the source selection file. The SSDD shall be the single summary document supporting selection of the best-value proposal consistent with the stated evaluation criteria; it shall clearly explain the decision and document the reasoning used by the SSA to reach the decision consistent with FAR 15.308.
The SSDD is fully releasable to the Government Accountability Office and others authorized to receive proprietary and source selection information. When releasing a copy of the SSDD to offerors or to anyone not authorized to receive proprietary and source selection information, redacted material shall be limited to that which is proprietary and that which shall continue to be protected as source selection information. The need to redact such information is not a sufficient reason to refrain from preparing a properly written SSDD.
See Chapter 3 of the DoD Source Selection Procedures at https://acc.dau.mil/dodssp
