Still Effective: Four Takeaways from the FY 2019 GAO Protest Statistics
The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) has released its Annual Report to Congress summarizing bid protest activity for Fiscal Year 2019 (B-158766). The report shows that the number of protests has fallen, the effectiveness rate has remained high and remarkably stable, and hearings have made a bit of a comeback.
The chart below summarizes the GAO protest statistics from FY 2014 to FY 2019.
Here are four key takeaways from the latest report.
#1: Overall, the Number of Protests Is Down
The overall number of protests fell in FY 2019. After years of GAO receiving 2500 or more protests, FY 2019 saw only 2198 cases filed—a fairly substantial drop-off of 16 percent from the 2607 cases filed in FY 2018. This could be an anomaly, or may reflect the fact that the Government is making a greater percentage of awards through task orders, which have seen their protest jurisdiction further restricted (see takeaway #2).
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