Bid protest problems overblown, says former OFPP head

What: A new research paper on federal bid protests for the American Bar Association by Dan Gordon, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy.

Why: Bid protests are not as common as believed and could be more asset than liability to U.S. federal procurement, according to Gordon, who is now associate dean for government procurement law at George Washington University.

The Government Accountability Office counts federal bid protests in such a convoluted way, says Gordon, that the protest process is perceived to be overly complex and extensive. Specifically, his 49-page report says that between pre- and post-award protests, as well as supplemental filings in between, the GAO is double or even triple-counting some contract protests. That inflated count, says Gordon, can result in a perception that tens of thousands of protests filed each year.

Gordon asserts that the total number of protests is no more than a couple of thousand a year. Crunching government numbers, he calculates that in 2006 only 1.92 protests resulted from each $1 billion in federal procurement spending. In 2011 the number was a bit higher, 2.74 per $1 billion.

Additionally, using data from a total of 200,000 Air Force contracts in 2008, Gordon concludes that only ½ of 1 percent of all government contracts are actually protested.

Verbatim: "Since the days when protest filings were tracked on 3 x 5 cards, the GAO has counted cases in a manner that can cause people to believe that protest numbers are higher than they actually are."