In its January 2016 decision in ASM Research, the GAO found that the Department of Veterans Affairs failed to properly enforce its conflict of interest rules in a solicitation for cloud-based software infrastructure services. The GAO found that the winning bidder should have been rejected due to impaired objectivity since the awarded contract would require the contractor to evaluate its own prior work and assess fault as between itself and third-parties for performance failures. The GAO found that the government failed to avoid, neutralize or mitigate the potential conflict of interest and therefore ordered a re-evaluation.
