I used to develop explosives detection technology that we were hoping to sell to Smiths or TSA in a government contract. We were a research laboratory hoping to get our technology out into "industry". TSA and Smiths have their own "standards" for what they will use as basis for whether the detection methodology is viable, but they don't give those numbers or those materials out. There was a leaked document earlier this year (last year?) that contained some of this information and that was a Big Deal. I remember it took months to get something as simple as a Limit of Detection threshold that TSA benchmarks for each machine they procure.
In fact, one of the main reasons why I left is because it seemed so futile. We had very few customers to sell to, and yet we could never determine what they wanted or what channels were available to us to get it tested.
That happens quite often with government contracts. There is a lot of back-room deals, knock-knock, wink-wink, "I'm a friend of a friend" kind of stuff. There is some superficial formality and fake fairness tot the bidding process but it ultimately comes to who you know. Requirements are kept vague and only the "friends" are notified of what they are. Later during the review surprise! one company just happens to exactly read the mind of the buyers and gets picked.
This is even worse in the security related areas as the vagueness of requirements is justified to be security related.
Your best bet would have been to hire an ex-General or an ex-TSA high ranking official. Or at least hire someone who was a college roommate of some TSA official.
While I am not the person you are asking this question of, I can personally corroborate their story.
During my enlisted years, I saw plenty of this type of behaviour. Some G.S. or officer would be taken to lunch/dinner by the rep from a major defense contractor; guess which company gets the inside scoop on what the military is looking for? Due to multiple deltas between what I believed to be true and what the military was pushing as truth, I got out and went to work for a company doing web-related work.
A few years later, after I had allowed myself to forget how bad the military was, I took a position with a small defense contractor. This contractor had a couple decades of experience working in a particular field of research and were widely regarded as experts in that field. A few years after I joined the company, a major defense contractor got wind of how successful this company was and decided they wanted the pie for themselves.
First, they regularly took the G.S. in charge of the project out to lunch and the golf course. Then they planted the idea that the military needed fail-over redundancy for such a "mission-critical" position held by the company I worked for. The G.S. then ordered the company I worked for to hand over a copy of all production code to this major defense contractor; after all, the military needed fail-over redundancy for this "mission-critical" position.
It doesn't take too many brain cells to figure out what happened next. So, based on my past experience, I would be very happy with never working anywhere near a government institution again. On the bright side, working so close to government allows you to realize the vast majority of taxes are actually legalized theft.
By the same token, I've been told that unless you have an "inside track" it's a waste of time to respond to a government RFP. 80% of the time, maybe more, they already know who they're going to give the work to. The RFP is just a formality.
I agree with that. Some buyers even have the nerve to call to inquire "how we do things?" just to turn around and tell it to our competitors (their friends who they were going to pick anyway).
Next thing we know those competitors are implementing things pretty much the way we described to the buyers.
You (they) should have asked a few congress-critters to be on your board of directors. You still might not get a copy of the standards, but you'd likely have been selling machines.
In fact, one of the main reasons why I left is because it seemed so futile. We had very few customers to sell to, and yet we could never determine what they wanted or what channels were available to us to get it tested.