November 13, 2023

GAO

Protest

Protests

GAO Files Annual Report to Congress

The General Accountability Office (GAO) filed its annual report to Congress summarizing the protest filings made during the fiscal year from October 1, 2022 thru September 30, 2023. According to the report, dated October 26, 2023, the GAO received 1,957 protests, 38 cost claims and 30 requests for reconsideration. In comparison to the previous fiscal year, the protest filings increased 22 percent. The report notes that a “significant number” of protests were not decided on the merits by the GAO on account of voluntarily “corrective action” taken by the Agency. For protest filings in which the GAO addressed the merits of the protest grounds, 31 percent of the protests were sustained. The most common grounds for sustaining a protest were unreasonable technical evaluation, flawed selection decision and unreasonable cost or price evaluation. The overall “effectiveness rate” of the protest filings was 57%, which includes both those filings sustained by the GAO and those where the Agency took corrective action.