Fair and Open Government Contracting?

Consider the following scenario, generalized from recent news. A company submits an idea to the federal government for potential funding. The government then publishes an open competition requesting bids to execute the idea. The original company's bid is high and not the best value but the government awards it anyway. In the actual case, ethicsviolations were declared in the news to have been violated and according to the report reprimands were made.

By my read of the reported circumstances, the reprimands were to the wrong people and for the reasons. When a company submits an idea for funding, the idea is generally not donated to the government. Thus, generally the government has no right to publish such ideas. In such cases, the open competition is that anyone can submit an unsolicited proposal for funding. The government can select, or not, those of good value. Such proposals are very different from circumstances in which the idea is generated by the government. When government personnel generate an idea, the government can and should create open competition by publishing the idea and requesting bids to execute it. And, in such case the government evaluators should take the best bid to execute that idea.

The federal government has different processes for the two different situations. Based on the circumstances as reported for the case, reprimands should have gone to those who routed the idea through the wrong process. Instead, the reprimands went to those who tried to mitigate the erroneous process selection. Perhaps, both groups should have been reprimanded. In any case, the company that submitted the idea may have a tort case against the government for violation of intellectual property rules.