Procurement on CrossGov.com

Bid Protests at GAO Fall to a Decade Low With a 14% Sustain Rate, Yet the Pentagon and GSA Push 'Loser Pays'

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Companies filed 1,688 cases at GAO in fiscal 2025 challenging federal contract awards, according to GAO’s annual report to Congress. That’s 6% fewer than the year before and among the lowest counts in a decade. GAO decided 380 on the merits and sustained 53, a sustain rate of 14%, down from 16%.

The more telling number is the effectiveness rate: in 52% of cases the protester got some relief, either because GAO sustained the protest or because the agency fixed the problem itself before a decision.

GAO Flags FAR Overhaul Clause Confusion as the Second Batch of Rewrites Hits an October 19 Comment Deadline

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 6 October GAO released its decision on protests against the Army’s MAPS contract, a $50 billion vehicle for professional and IT services. It upheld the Army. But it said the solicitation’s mix of old Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses and new ones from the administration’s FAR overhaul could leave bidders unable to tell which version applied, and called it “not a model of clarity.”

That’s the problem contractors have described all year. Since the overhaul began, they’ve had to bid against three texts at once: the old FAR, the agency deviations that put the new text into effect early, and the formal proposed rules.

GSA OneGov AI Deals Move Past $1 Pricing as Federal Procurement Consolidates and the FAR Is Rewritten

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In August 2025 three AI companies offered the US government their enterprise products for almost nothing. OpenAI put ChatGPT Enterprise on the table at $1 per agency for a year. Anthropic offered Claude for $1 across all three branches of government. Google came in at 47 cents for Gemini. All three went through OneGov, a programme the General Services Administration launched in April 2025 to negotiate governmentwide deals directly with big software makers.

EU Cloud and AI Development Act Could Shut US Cloud Providers Out of Sensitive Public Contracts

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Amazon, Microsoft and Google run most of Europe’s cloud computing. A law now moving through Brussels could decide whether they may keep hosting its most sensitive public data. On 8 September 2026 EU governments went through the key part of the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, articles 29 to 44, article by article. Those articles set who qualifies to host public-sector data at each level of sensitivity, and they turn on conditions the United States may not meet.

US Threatens to Pull Buy American Waivers as Europe Writes 'Buy European' Into Defence Spending

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 15 September 2026 the United States sent EU lawmakers a paper warning that it “will review all potential response measures” if the EU writes a European preference into its next long-term budget. One of the measures on the table: rolling back the Buy American waivers that let European defence companies compete for Pentagon contracts.

Nineteen of the EU’s 27 member states have Reciprocal Defense Procurement agreements with the US. Under them, American buyers waive Buy American rules for those countries’ firms, and the countries do the same for US firms. Washington is now signalling that the deal works only if Europe keeps buying American too.

Why Government IT Projects Fail: HealthCare.gov, the FBI's Virtual Case File and the Lessons From Phoenix, Horizon and Robodebt

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 1 October 2013 HealthCare.gov opened and buckled on day one. The HHS inspector general later counted nearly $800 million obligated across 60 contracts by February 2014. A decade earlier the FBI had scrapped its Virtual Case File after three years and $170 million. And GAO says the federal government still spends about 80% of its more than $100 billion a year in IT on running systems it already has.

GSA's $50 Billion Multiple Award Schedule vs Britain's G-Cloud: Two Ways to Buy Government Technology

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule is the federal government’s biggest catalogue of things it can buy without a full tender. GSA says it moves more than $52 billion a year in products and services. An analysis of GSA data puts fiscal 2025 sales at about $50.6 billion, with about 14,600 contract holders and roughly a third of sales going to small businesses.

It’s in the middle of a shake-up. In fiscal 2025 GSA cut about 1,600 contracts it judged unnecessary. In May 2026 it reorganised its Federal Acquisition Service, putting the schedule in one office alongside its big governmentwide IT contracts. And since March 2025, an executive order has made GSA the central buyer of common goods and services for the whole government.

Hegseth's Acquisition Overhaul Meets GAO's Numbers: 12-Year Weapons Timelines, a Cancelled Frigate and a Late Columbia Submarine

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GAO’s annual assessment of major weapons programmes, published on 2 July 2026, covered 104 programmes with planned spending of more than $2.4 trillion. It found the average time to field a new capability is now over 12 years, and rising. Of 40 programmes started on the Pentagon’s fast “middle tier” path since 2018, 18 began with immature technology.

That’s the baseline against which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acquisition overhaul, launched in November 2025, will be judged.

VA's Oracle Health Record Costs Near $50 Billion as the Contract Ceiling Nearly Triples and Cleveland and Anchorage Go Next

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on 2 September, VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence put the cost of the department’s new electronic health record at about $48 billion: about $37 billion to finish deploying it through 2031 and about $11 billion to run it. He confirmed the figure isn’t an independent estimate.

The last independent estimate, by the Institute for Defense Analyses in 2022, was $49.8 billion over the system’s life. GAO testified the same day that the estimate needs updating and that VA still hasn’t provided a new cost estimate or a schedule GAO can assess.