GAO Considers Receipt of Email During Regular Business Hours Adequate Notice

A recent GAO decision provides a costly lesson about the importance of having internal procedures to receive and respond to official e-mail communications when a company team member is unavailable. The stakes can be big–GAO recently dismissed a contractor’s protest challenging the Department of State’s decision to cancel a solicitation. The question in this matter revolved around when a party is deemed to have  received constructive notice of an agency’s cancellation of a solicitation.

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GAO Clarifies Timeliness Rules for Email Notice of Agency-Level Protest

You can access the internet from your couch, the skies above, and even from space. This means that you can also access your emails from each of these locations. I am sure that some of you have received emails from GAO, an agency, or a contracting officer on your phone in the last month. You may even be reading this blog while on the go. In our ever-connected world, is it possible to establish “regular business hours” and truly disconnect when it comes to emails?

As it turns out, GAO says you can.

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GAO: ASFI Website Is No FedBizOpps

Under the GAO’s bid protest rules, an offeror is not presumed to have knowledge of information published on the Army’s Single Face to Industry (ASFI) website.

In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an offeror did not have “constructive knowledge” of an amendment posted on the ASFI because, unlike FedBizOpps, the ASFI has not been designated as a government-wide point of entry for the publication of solicitations.

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