Assessing Bid Protests of U.S. Department of Defense Procurements: Identifying Issues, Trends, and Drivers

Abstract

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR2356Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication.ISBN: 978-1-9774-0005-5 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2018 RAND CorporationR® is a registered trademark.iii PrefaceThis report documents the RAND Corporation's assessment of the prevalence and impact of bid protests on U.S. Department of Defense acquisitions. It is the product of a study on this issue that Congress called for in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017. 1 The findings are intended to inform Congress and U.S. defense leaders about the effectiveness of current procurement policies and processes to reduce bid protests. It assumes that the reader has some basic knowledge of the federal bid protest system and venues for filing protests.RAND assembled and analyzed available data on bid protests and sought to address the study elements specified in Section 885 of the legislation. The analysis built on prior RAND research that assessed trends in U.S. Air Force bid protests, analyzed two high-profile bid protests (the Combat Search and Rescue Helicopter and Aerial Refueling Tanker Aircraft programs) for lessons learned, and recommended changes to Air Force acquisition tactics to counter bid protests in the future. 2 In addition, for the current study, the RAND research team reviewed and summarized studies and analyses conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and other organizations on the prevalence and impact of bid protests.This report was delivered to Congress on December 21, 2017. It has since been professionally typeset and proofread.This research was sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy, and conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and developm...

Grieving the loss of a public contract: De La Rue and the Brexit passport

“…For her, patients who were listened to and shown empathy by medical professionals emerged from their state of anger quicker. In this vein, it is notable that the US Air Force has introduced "extended debriefing" as part of its strategy to minimise legal challenges to contract award decisions (Arena et al, 2018). "Extended debriefing" provides full information disclosure about the award process to failed bidders' legal representatives.…”

“…Specifically, the paper sets out to answer the question of how firms react to losing a major government contract. Aside from quantitative assessments on the incidence and outcomes of bid protests (Arena et al, 2018), there has been little attempt to address this question. Yet it deserves attention as academic and practitioner interest in public procurement continues to grow.…”

Predicting bid protests: what should sourcing teams (not) do?

“…Bid protests have become a substantial aspect of government procurement (Cibinic et al, 2011). In 2016, 2,621 protests were received by the Government Accountability Office (2016), double the number received in 2008 (Arena et al, 2018). This number trended steeply upward from 2007 to 2011, and then levelled.…”

“…Amazon Web Service's protest against the Pentagon's award of the $10bn "JEDI" (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract to Microsoft is the latest contract bid protest to capture headlines, and exemplifies a systemic and poorly researched phenomenon that afflicts some of the world's largest purchasing organizations: fear of a rare event driving costly system-wide maladaptive behavior. Even though bid protests only occur in 0.26% of awarded contracts (Arena et al, 2018), they drive costly, widespread behavioral changes across government procurement. Evidence suggests that fear of bid protests drives a significant portion of government sourcing costs that are 7.7% of the total contract cost (Hawkins et al, 2016) regardless of whether a bid protest is filed and before the contract is even signed.…”

“…Protests as a percentage of protest opportunities (i.e. awarded contract actions) increased from 0.16% in 2008 to 0.26% in 2016 (Arena et al, 2018). Of those protest cases that made it to a decision from 2009 to 2014 (i.e.…”