Most Prevalent Reasons for Sustained Protests

Each year, the GAO releases the most prevalent grounds for sustaining protests during the preceding fiscal year. Similarly to past years, the most prevalent grounds for FY 2020 were:

1. Unreasonable technical evaluation
2. Flawed solicitation
3. Unreasonable cost or price evaluation
4. Unreasonable past performance evaluation

For comparison, the most prevalent grounds for FY2019 were:

1. Unreasonable technical evaluation
2. Inadequate documentation of the record
3. Flawed selection decision
4. Unequal treatment
5. Unreasonable cost or price evaluation

In its Report, the GAO cited a recent case as highlighting one of the typical most prevalent reasons for sustain protests: unreasonable technical evaluation. The GAO sustained the protest of Leidos Innovations Corp., B-417568.3, B-417468.4 (May 11, 2020) after the protester’s challenge that the agency unreasonably excluded portions of offerors’ proposals as contrary to the solicitation. The GAO agreed, finding that the agency’s evaluation was unreasonable where the agency failed to comply with the solicitation’s requirements regarding consideration of the excluded information. Specifically, the agency failed to consider information discussed during each offerors’ Q&A sessions and Interchange Notices (INs) despite the solicitation’s unambiguous statement such information would be considered in making the selection decision.