Scott Hommer and Emily Unnasch published “Government Accountability Office Modernizes Written Decisions on Procedural Issues in the November 2019 edition of the Government Contracting Law Report.The following is an excerpt:
In the past few years, Congress has demonstrated a heightened interest in the bid protest process, seeking to identify how legislative amendments to bid protest procedures could improve the efficiency of the procurement process, prevent frivolous protests that create a bottleneck on contract awards, and generally advance procurement outcomes for the federal government (and those companies that choose to contract with federal agencies). Within the context of this recent focus on bid protest reform, the Government Accountability Office ("GAO") has renewed its attention to the procedures for adjudicating bid protests, publishing several decisions over the last year that substantively address the merits of procedural issues. The GAO's decision to modernize its guidance on such procedural issues is opportune, as a number of the relevant decisions were published decades ago—dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.