The Government Accountability Office reported that 1,688 bid protests were filed in fiscal year 2025 to challenge federal contract awards, reflecting a 6 percent drop from the 1,803 cases recorded in the previous fiscal year.
In a letter dated Friday, GAO told congressional committees that contractors filed 1,617 protests, 47 reconsideration requests and 24 cost claims in FY 2025.
According to the letter, the congressional watchdog closed 1,737 bid protest cases during the year, 359 of which were associated with GAO’s jurisdiction over task orders.
What Do GAO Data Reveal About Bid Protest Trends?
According to GAO data, FY 2025 marked the second consecutive year of declining contract award challenges. In FY 2024, bid protests filed with GAO dropped 11 percent.
By contrast, GAO received 2,025 cases in FY 2023, representing a 22 percent increase from the previous fiscal year. A substantial portion of these protests challenged a single procurement involving the Department of Health and Human Services’ Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 4, or CIO-SP4, governmentwide acquisition contract for IT offerings.
FY 2023 was a step away from a years-long downward trend in the number of protests filed. In fiscal years 2022 and 2021, bid protests fell 12 percent. In FY 2020, GAO received 2,149 protests, down 2 percent from the prior fiscal year.
What Are the Most Common Reasons GAO Sustains Protests?
GAO said it sustained 14 percent of all protests, with the most common reasons for the decisions being unreasonable technical evaluation, issues with cost or price evaluation and unreasonable proposal rejections.
The office reported an effectiveness rate of 52 percent, indicating that protests resulted in either a sustain or voluntary agency corrective action in more than half of the cases.
“It is important to note that a significant number of protests filed with our Office do not reach a decision on the merits because agencies voluntarily take corrective action in response to the protest rather than defend the protest on the merits. Agencies need not, and do not, report any of the myriad reasons they decide to take voluntary corrective action,” Edda Emmanuelli Perez, general counsel at GAO, wrote in the letter to Congress.
