GAO has issued its Bid Protest Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2017. Most notably, the effectiveness rate hit 47%.
The effectiveness rate looks at all cases filed, and measures the percentage of cases in which a protester obtains some relief, whether through a sustain by GAO or voluntary corrective action by the agency.
That’s right: Protesters obtained relief in almost half of all protests last year. And this year’s 47% effectiveness rate is a new all-time high — continuing a steady upward march over the past several years. When GAO began measuring the sustain rate in 2001, it was just 33%. By 2008, it had risen to 42%. It then held pretty steady through 2012, but has been rising since:
FY 2012 42%
FY 2013 43%
FY 2014 43%
FY 2015 45%
FY 2016 46%
FY 2017 47%
Meanwhile, GAO’s sustain rate looks only at those protests that reach a decision on the merits, and measures the percentage of those protests that are sustained by GAO. This year’s sustain rate dropped to 17%, but for several reasons the sustain rate has always been volatile, reaching as high as 29% and as low as 12% in the last 15 years.
So while this year’s rate of sustains by GAO dipped, the number of voluntary corrective actions went up.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2017/11/gaos-annual-report-protests-effectiveness/
