GAO decisions/Denied/Decided 17 Sep 2025
Peraton Inc.
Unfair competitive advantage from hiring former government officials; hard facts
The procurement
GSA issued a task order request under its Alliant 2 governmentwide acquisition contract for IT lifecycle support services for U.S. Strategic Command, using a best-value tradeoff of cost and four non-cost factors (technical approach, management approach, key personnel/staffing, corporate experience) in descending importance. General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) won with a Good overall technical rating at $1,513,408,086; Peraton, the incumbent, was rated Acceptable at $1,480,437,240.
The protest
Two GDIT employees who worked on its proposal were former senior USSTRATCOM officials: a former Deputy Director of the command's J6 and a former Deputy Chief Information Officer. Peraton argued that in those jobs they had access to non-public information about its incumbent performance, including its technical solutions, staffing approach and organizational structure, financial information and basis of estimates, supplier lists, teaming agreements and operational plans, giving GDIT an unfair competitive advantage.
The agency’s answer
The contracting officer investigated. The two employees had left the command in June 2018 and December 2020, and the scope and IT architecture of the requirement had changed substantially since then. The contracting officer concluded that any non-public, competitively useful information they had while in government was "undoubtably stale" and gave GDIT no unfair advantage.
What decided it
Peraton showed no hard facts that useful information survived years of time and big changes in the requirement.
GAO denied the protest. A firm that hires a former government employee can be disqualified for an unfair competitive advantage, but the determination must rest on hard facts, not mere innuendo or suspicion, and a protester must identify hard facts showing the existence or potential existence of a conflict. The contracting officer reasonably investigated and concluded that, given the years since the officials left and the substantial changes to the requirement, any non-public information was stale. Peraton offered no hard facts showing otherwise.
“A protester, however, must identify hard facts that indicate the existence or potential existence of a conflict; mere inference or suspicion of an actual or potential conflict is not enough.”
GAO, B-423639
For the file: When a protester points to an awardee's ex-government hires, a documented contracting officer inquiry into when they left, what they could see, and how much the requirement changed since is what holds up.
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Facts are condensed from the published decision and the quote is verbatim; the takeaway is ours. Where GAO decided several grounds, only this one is described.
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