Centurion Analytics, LLC (B-423755; B-423755.2; B-423779; B-423779.2)

You should care.

Categories: Organizational conflict of interest, former officials

Date: 12 December 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423755,b-423755.2,b-423779,b-423779.2

Centurion protested two VA cemetery-maintenance awards to Veterans Choice, arguing the awardee should have been excluded because it was owned by a former VA official who supposedly had access to competitively useful nonpublic information. The decision is a useful reminder that OCI allegations involving former government personnel still require hard facts.

The former official had worked in the VA’s National Cemetery Administration, but the agency investigated and found the person’s duties involved internal operations and employee administration rather than contracting. The record also showed the person had left the VA more than a year before these Ohio Western procurements were planned, had never worked at that cemetery or in that district, and did not have access to the relevant contracting files.

GAO denied the protests. It concluded the agency reasonably investigated the allegation and reasonably found no access to nonpublic competitively useful information. General familiarity with agency operations, without more, was not enough to establish an unfair competitive advantage.

The protests are denied.

Digest

Protest that awardee should have been eliminated from the competition based on a conflict of interest is denied where the agency investigated the allegation and reasonably concluded that the awardee did not have access to non-public competitively useful information.