Monday, December 19, 2016

GAO Publishes Fiscal Year 2016 Bid Protest Statistics

The Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 requires that the Comptroller General (i.e. the GAO or Government Accountability Office) report to Congress each instance in which a federal agency did not fully implement one of its recommendations in connection with a bid protest decided in the prior fiscal year and each instance in which a final decision in a protest was not rendered within 100 days after the protest has been filed.

The GAO just published its Fiscal Year 2016 bid protest annual report to Congress reporting that there were no such occurrences during fiscal year 2016. The report also provided summary level data concerning the overall protest filings for the year and shows comparative data from previous years.

The number of bid protest cases filed increased by six percent over fiscal year 2015. That's the highest number of cases since at least 1997. The number of cases closed also set a record for that time-frame.

GAO issued 616 decisions of which 139 were "sustains". That represents a sustention rate of 22.5 percent which is almost double that of fiscal year 2015. The effectiveness rate which measures a protestor obtaining some form of relief from the agency either as a result of voluntary agency corrective action or the GAO sustaining the protest held steady at 46 percent. That means protesters have almost a 50 percent chance of some form of relief - not bad odds, considering.

The number of ADR (Alternative Disputes Resolution) cases fell significantly from 103 cases in fiscal year 2015 to only 69 cases in fiscal year 2015. Eighty-four percent of those cases were resolved without a formal GAO decision.

You can read the Annual Report here.

You can read our posting from last year's Annual Report here.


No comments:

Post a Comment