Tag: bid protests

House Government Operations Subcommittee: Bid Protest Reform

On July 22, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Operations, held a hearing on “Bid Protest Reform: Understanding the Problem” (Congress.gov record of hearing).

The hearing was led by the Subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions (TX), and ranking member Rep. Kweisi Mfume (MD). Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC) also offered opening remarks. The hearing (subcommittee record) was called to allow members of Congress to hear from experts about potential bid protest reforms.

Kenneth Patton, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Kenneth Patton, Managing Associate General Counsel at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and a member of GW Law’s Government Procurement Law Program advisory board, was the lead witness. He presented GAO’s response to Section 885 of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which asked for input on proposed changes, such as charging costs to losing protesters. Ken Patton explained why GAO (and the Defense Department) believe radical changes to the protest system are not needed — that the bid protest system is fundamentally sound, after a century of development. (See ABA submission on Section 885.)

Professor Christopher Yukins (GW Law) and Zachary Prince (GW Law JD 2013 (with honors), partner at the law firm of Haynes & Boone and an adjunct professor at the Law School) agreed. In his testimony, Zach Prince urged members of Congress instead to expand agency debriefings to losing bidders, to reduce bid protests and expand transparency, and Chris Yukins did the same in his testimony. See, e.g., Nathaniel Castellano & Peter Camp, Postscript III: Enhanced Debriefings: A Simple Strategy for a More Manageable Protest Process, 35 Nash & Cibinic Rep. ¶ 46 (2021). (By coincidence, GW Law the same day hosted part of its global webinar series with the Open Contracting Partnership in Asia, on transparency in contracting.)

Editor’s note: On August 14, 2025, Chris Yukins submitted his responses to follow-up questions from Chairman Pete Sessions, on potential pathways to bid protest reform.

After the hearing Chris Yukins and Zach Prince met with House staffers to discuss next steps, including a webinar that GW Law will be holding on September 9 on developments in bid protests — click above to register.

Related Webinar

GW Law Webinar: U.S. Bid Protests — Progress and Reform

Meeting with Principal Investigators on Congressionally Commissioned Study on Bid Protests at the Department of Defense

Tuesday, April 19, 12 noon – online

click to REGISTER FOR PUBLIC MEETING

In the conference report which accompanied section 886 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, Congress called for the Defense Department to launch a new study of bid protests, to follow up on an earlier report by the RAND Corporation. Congress called for a new study to address:

  • The rate at which protestors are awarded the contract that was the subject of the bid protest;
  • The time it takes the Defense Department to implement corrective actions after a ruling or decision, the percentage of those corrective actions that are subsequently protested, and the outcomes of those protests;
  • Analysis of the time spent at each phase of the procurement process attempting to prevent a protest, addressing a protest, or taking corrective action in response to a protest, including the efficacy of any actions attempted to prevent the occurrence of a protest; and
  • Analysis of the number and disposition of protests filed within the Defense Department.

The conferees also emphasized “the potential benefits of a robust agency-level bid protest process.” The conferees further said that the study “should review existing law, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, and agency policies and procedures,” and should “solicit input from across the DOD and industry stakeholders.”

Further information on the study is available at https://publicprocurementinternational.com/congressionally-commissioned-bid-protest-study/.

The first of several public meetings will be held on the study on Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 12:00 – 1:30 Eastern.  Principal investigators David Drabkin and Christopher Yukins will discuss initial steps from the study, and will seek input on the questions posed by Congress, above.  The meeting will be virtual and will not be recorded, and attendance is limited. 

Congressional Research Service: Good Introduction to U.S. Federal Bid Protests

The Congressional Research Service, a research arm of the Library of Congress, has published a very useful overview of the U.S. bid protest (bid challenge) system, by David Carpenter & Moshe Schwartz, Government Contract Bid Protests: Analysis of Legal Processes and Recent Developments (Updated November 28, 2018, CRS Report R45080), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45080.pdf