Where the agency evaluated a mitigation plan on the merits, GAO denied the ground. Where it leaned on an assumption that downstream government approval would catch any bias, GAO sustained.
Where the agency leaned on approval or a firewall, GAO sustained
- B-423671.2 (Dec 2025): GAO found “the narrowly-focused inquiry and conclusory statements insufficient to show that the agency gave meaningful consideration to the risks.”
- B-417415 (2019): “the fact that agency officials must approve recommendations made by [the awardee] does not inherently mitigate the risk” of biased advice.
- B-412870.2 (2016): “a firewall arrangement is virtually irrelevant to an OCI involving potentially impaired objectivity.”
Where the agency evaluated a real plan, GAO denied
- B-417643 (2020): the contracting officer “determined that [the awardee’s] mitigation plan was sufficient,” and GAO found “no basis to question the reasonableness of the agency’s evaluation.”
The line is the work, not the structure. Where the agency actually weighed a plan, the ground failed; where it rested on a downstream approval, it sustained.
These are illustrative of the line, not a frequency: across the corpus, OCI-determination grounds sustained in 57 of 413 decided, about one in seven. A structural sample of opinion-bearing decisions, not a census.
The corpus baseline behind this note is Three Patterns Across Decades.
If you work GAO bid protests and want the full set behind a pattern, fifteen minutes is what we ask: calendly.com/sediment-research.
— Sediment Research