Top Government Contracting Policies Of 2023: Year In Review

Kayleigh Scalzo’s commentary was included in a Law360 article reviewing the most significant policy changes for government contractors in 2023 and how it will affect the industry. Kayleigh commented on a proposed "loser pays" provision which would have required contractors to pay the DOD's costs related to any unsuccessful bid protest at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). It was ultimately not passed into law.

Kayleigh pointed out that it was not the first time lawmakers have proposed a similar pilot program in recent years, amid ongoing concerns about frivolous protests — concerns that have lingered despite independent reports showing that bid protests are both rare and rarely abused, and the consistently high annual ‘effectiveness rate’ where a GAO protest is either sustained or leads to corrective action. "It's kind of this head scratcher of why, if the data doesn't support the idea of there being a problem with frivolous protests, there's a [perceived] need to target what apparently is a phantom, as opposed to something that's actually showing up in the data," she said.