The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued to Congress its annual bid protest report. Of particular note, protesters received some relief in 44 percent of the protests. GAO reports this statistic as an “effectiveness rate”—i.e., the percentage of protests where the protester obtained “some form of relief from the agency . . . either as a result of voluntary agency corrective action or [GAO] sustaining the protest.” As the following chart from GAO’s report thus shows, protesters continue to receive some form of relief from the agency in nearly half of the protests filed with GAO:
The report states that the “most prevalent grounds” for sustaining protests during the 2018 fiscal year were (1) unreasonable technical evaluation; (2) unreasonable cost or price evaluation; and (3) flawed selection decision. By comparison, in fiscal year 2017, the “most prevalent reasons” for sustaining protests were (1) unreasonable technical evaluation; (2) unreasonable past performance evaluation; (3) unreasonable cost or price evaluation; (4) inadequate documentation of the record; and (5) flawed selection decision.
The GAO fiscal year 2018 bid protest report is available for download. If you have any questions about GAO’s report or the bid protest process in general, please do not hesitate to contact Aron Beezley.