GAO Sustains Protest Over CIA’s Faulty Cost Realism Evaluation
In a recent bid protest decision, Markon LLC, B-423767-.4, December 12, 2025, the Government Accountability Officer (GAO) delivered a pointed reminder about the limits of agency discretion in cost realism evaluations. In this case, which involved a solicitation for business operations, information technology engineering support, and business enterprise modernization services, the Central Intelligence Agency...
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What Federal Contractors Should Know About the Government Shutdown
Those of us who have spent time working in—or with—the federal government over the past several decades know that government shutdowns are not entirely uncommon. There have actually been a total of 21 government shutdowns over the past 50 years, with the last occurring in 2019 and the longest lasting 35 days. By the...
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Two CAS Moves in One Day: What Small Contractors Need to Know
On September 11, 2025, the Office of Management & Budget’s (“OMB”) Cost Accounting Standards Board, which is chaired by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (“OFPP”), dropped two important updates: A final rule that simplifies how revenue and leases are handled under CAS; and A proposed rule that would scale back or align four...
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Federal Circuit, Sitting En Banc, Reverses Landmark Panel Decision on Bid Protest Standing
Back in June 2024, we wrote about a 3-judge panel’s holding in Percipient.AI, Inc. v. United States, 104 F.4th 839 (Fed. Cir. 2024), that a contractor was permitted to bring a bid protest against the government alleging violations of a procurement statute even though it did not “challenge a contract, proposed contract, or solicitation...
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Biggest FAR Overhaul in 40 Years
On August 15, 2025, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (“OFPP”) at the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) announced the most sweeping changes that the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”) has experienced in the preceding four decades. The OMB is seeking to minimize the hoops contractors must jump through to work with the federal...
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GAO Addresses Potential Bid Protest Fee-Shifting Provision in Report to Congress
The GAO recently issued a report to Congress on potential changes to its bid protest function (the report was required by Section 885 of the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act). In one section, GAO addressed potential options for implementing a “loser pays” mechanism for bid protests challenging Department of Defense (“DoD”) procurement actions....
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