Protest Denied: A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of Failed Challenges to Government Contracting

Abstract

Firms interested in doing business with the US federal government, one of the biggest spenders in the world, may have reasons to believe they have been denied fair opportunities to compete for federal government contracts. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) provides an expeditious forum where interested parties can challenge government procurement decisions. In this meta-summary, the authors qualitatively analyzed 17 denied bid protests filed against the US Army Corps of Engineers to identify quasi-legal bases that the GAO most frequently took in its denial of bid protests. The findings were abstracted into 12 themes with corresponding frequency effect sizes. Finally, three recent denied bid protests were reviewed in light of the themes to validate the effectiveness of the findings. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about one aspect of the US government acquisition practice, i.e., denying bid protests, and presents findings that can limitedly assist small businesses as defined by the relevant regulations to test the validity of their cases in advance. This article presents the 12 quasi-legal reasons most frequently taken by the US GAO in denying 17 bid protests filed against the US Army Corps of Engineers. More recent denied bid protests showed that the GAO used some of the same reasons to deny the bid protests. Thus, by reviewing what has been reported herein, firms interested in challenging procurement decisions made by agencies within the US federal government can limitedly discern whether their protests would be denied based on those reasons. Small businesses that probably lack in-house legal resources can look at the findings before filing their bid protests. More proactively, bidders can have their proposals tested by the findings before submitting them to limitedly increase the likelihood of winning government contracts. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that as new GAO decisions are made continually, the thematic findings will expand and become more sophisticated.