GAO Cautions Agencies—Over-Redact at Your Own Peril

Bid protest practitioners in recent years have witnessed agencies’ increasing efforts to limit the production of documents and information in response to Government Accountability Office (GAO) bid protests—often will little pushback from GAO. This practice has underscored the notable difference in the scope of bid protest records before GAO versus the Court of Federal Claims. However, in Tiger Natural Gas, Inc., B-423744, Dec. 10, 2025, 2025 CPD ¶ __, GAO made clear that there are limits to the scope of redactions, and GAO will sustain a protest where there is insufficient evidence that the agency’s actions were reasonable.

Even though a protective order was issued in connection with the protest, in response to challenges to the technical evaluation, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) produced proposal excerpts with all but the offeror and subcontractor names redacted, and evaluation documents with all but the offeror and subcontractor names and overall ratings redacted. DLA also produced a declaration from a technical evaluator asserting that the protester and awardee were correctly evaluated.

GAO chided DLA and found that the record produced was insufficient to conclude the evaluation was reasonable, noting that “[s]ome documents are so heavily redacted that nothing more than their mere existence can be gleaned.” Although DLA defended its limited record by asserting that a protester “is not entitled to a fishing expedition in order to gain information about its competitors,” GAO explained the protective order prevents this from happening. GAO further found that the declaration was also insufficient to support the reasonableness of the evaluation as it “provides little further explanation of the agency’s contemporaneous evaluation conclusions” and failed to “fill in any previously unrecorded details.”

Given the scant information DLA produced, GAO found that “the record as produced does not include sufficient information to establish that the agency’s judgment was reasonable, sufficiently documented, or that proposals submitted by [the bidders] were otherwise technically acceptable.” Ultimately, GAO sustained the allegations pertaining to DLA’s evaluation, while denying other, unrelated protest grounds. In sustaining the protest, GAO unequivocally signaled to agencies that they must show their work, and where they refuse to do so, GAO will sustain the protest.