The procurement process frequently brings the need for public transparency into conflict with the need for private confidentiality. Bid and proposal solicitations may require submission of detailed cost and pricing information, as well as descriptions of methods of performance. Contractors sometimes consider this information proprietary and do not want it shared with competitors.

A Georgia court recently ruled that a contractor failed to prove that disclosure of its allocation of costs would reveal trade secrets involving design and methodology. The contractor’s detailed price proposal was not exempt from the state public records law and was available to the contractor’s competitors.

Other cases this week involved a lower-tier subcontractor’s payment bond rights and the presentation of mandatory information in a proposal. The lower-tier sub was too remote to recover against the bond. And, agency evaluators were not expected to cull through a proposal or engage in deductive reasoning to find required information.