RAND Corp. tells Congress that Bid Protests are Not a Problem
Client Alert | 1 min read | 01.05.18
RAND Corp. recently submitted a report to Congress on the effects of Department of Defense bid protests, as required by the 2017 NDAA. Interestingly, RAND found:
- Bid protests are not a significant impediment, as some in Congress have suggested. To the contrary, “bid protests are exceedingly uncommon for DoD procurements.”
- GAO’s 100-day deadline should stay. GAO already resolves 70% of protests within 60 days, and often needs the full 100 days for complex protests and numerous end of fiscal year protests.
- Task order protests are important. The higher effectiveness rate for task order protests indicates that such procurements may be more problematic and should be protestable.
- A majority of protests are brought by small businesses. Congress should consider approaches to reduce and improve such protests.
- Debriefings matter. “Evasive or adversarial debriefings may lead to a bid protest in most cases.”
RAND also recommended improving DoD recordkeeping to support future studies.
Insights
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U.S. Department of Commerce Partially Relaxes Export Controls on Syria
On August 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a final rule that modifies the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to reduce the number of export control restrictions on Syria, in alignment with Executive Order 14312, Providing For The Revocation of Syria Sanctions. The key adjustments made by this rule include the addition of new or expanded license exception eligibility for exports and reexports to Syria (which significantly broadens the number of items that can be exported or reexported to Syria) and the adoption of more permissive license review policies for exports and reexports to Syria.
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