FY 2018 GAO Protest Statistics Show Continued Success through Corrective Action
The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) has released its Annual Report to Congress detailing the bid protest statistics for Fiscal Year 2018 (B-158766). The report shows a continuation of recent trends: the sustain rate is low; overall success is nevertheless quite strong; and hearings have become nearly extinct.
The GAO issued a decision on the merits for 622 protests in FY 2018. That represents only a fraction of the 2,607 total protests received, but is the most decisions GAO has issued in at least 10 years. As is typically the case, less than 20 percent of those protests resulted in “sustain” decisions finding in favor of the protester—just 92 protests, or 15 percent of those decided in FY 2018. Despite that seemingly grim rate of success in merits decisions, protesters’ overall rate of success, what GAO terms the “effectiveness” rate, continues to hover around 45 percent. As before, protesters are obtaining desired relief in nearly half of all protests filed—but their “win” typically comes well before a final merits decision with the agency taking voluntary corrective action, usually within the first 30 days of the protest, before the agency report has been filed.
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