The Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) released its Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2024 (B-158766), summarizing bid protest activity during the 2024 fiscal year. The FY24 bid protest statistics reflect a continuation of recent trends, and course correction after the FY23 statistics were skewed by the 100+ protests challenging the Department of Health and Human Services’ government-wide acquisition contract, the Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 4 (“CIO-SP4”).

Overall, the number of protests is fairly steady, the effectiveness rate remains high (over 50 percent), and hearings are increasingly rare (just one in the last year).

Overall Course Correction After CIO-SP4

In FY23, GAO reported 2,025 filed cases, a 22-percent increase from FY22. However, there were many protests challenging a single large-scale procurement, CIO-SP4, which skewed the data. The FY24 bid protests data picks up where FY22, FY21, and FY20 left off. There were 1,803 protests filed in FY24, consistent with the slight downward trend GAO experienced from FY20 (2,149 protests filed), FY21 (1,897 protests filed), and FY22 (1,658 protests filed). Excluding FY23 and the CIO-SP4 procurement, GAO continues to experience a slight decrease in protests filed since FY20. While there were about 95 more protests filed in FY24 than in FY22, there were more than 300 fewer protests filed in FY24 than in FY20.

Sustain and Effectiveness Rates Remain Similar to FY20 through FY22

In FY23, the CIO-SP4 protests also affected the sustain rate (31 percent) and effectiveness rate, such as obtaining corrective action (57 percent). The FY24 sustain rate and effectiveness rate decreased to the historic mean and are consistent with prior years. These rates show that although it is relatively rare for a protester to prevail completely on the merits of its protest, there is a greater than 50 percent chance the agency will take some form of corrective action to address allegations raised in a protest. GAO thus remains a strong venue to convince the agency to address flaws in its procurement process.

Hearings and Hearing Rate Reaches Five-Year Low

Notably, GAO held only a single hearing in FY24, representing 0.2 percent of all filed protests. This represents both the lowest hearing number and lowest hearing rate since FY20.

Overall, GAO’s FY24 bid protest statistics represent a slight course correction from FY23 but still demonstrate that GAO remains a viable and often effective means at protesters’ disposal to urge an agency to address procurement errors. It is notable, though, that while GAO’s bid protests filed continue to slowly decline, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (“COFC”) experienced a banner year for bid protests filed: 249 protests, a remarkable 47-percent increase over FY23. It will be interesting to see whether the COFC increases its market share of bid protests over the next several years.