General Legal Decisions FAQs

• How are Comptroller General decisions and opinions identified?
• How can I find older decisions?
• When are decisions and opinions made public?
• How can I keep up-to-date on new Comptroller General decisions?
• How do I find military and civilian personnel pay and allowances decisions?
• Can I access laws, pending bills in Congress, federal or state case law, regulations, or executive orders through GAO’s Web site?
• Can I shepardize decisions, opinions, or bid protests on GAO’s Web site?
• How are Comptroller General decisions and opinions identified?
  Comptroller General decisions and opinions are identified by a B-number and date. Some decisions predating 1995 were published in Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States. Those decisions have B-numbers but are generally identified by volume, page number, and the year the decision was issued (e.g., 73 Comp. Gen. 77 (1994)). At the beginning of each volume is a "Table of Decision Numbers" cross-referencing B-numbers to the pages in that volume. See Bid Protest FAQs and Appropriation Law FAQs  for more details.

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• How can I find older decisions?
  Use the “Search Only Legal Decisions” link in the upper right corner of any page on this site.

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• When are decisions and opinions made public?
  Generally, our decisions and opinions are made public but not always on the same day they are decided. If decisions and opinions contain protected information, we must create redacted versions for the public that omit protected information. See 4 C.F.R. § 21.12. We typically publish redacted versions 2 to 3 weeks after the decision date. See How can I keep up-to-date on new Comptroller General decisions? for ways to get notified whenever we make a decision publicly available.
  
  For more details on the timing of our decisions and opinions, see:

  Procedures and Practices for Legal Decisions and Opinions
  GAO-06-1064SP, September 05, 2006
  
  

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• How can I keep up-to-date on new Comptroller General decisions?
  Three ways:
  • Subscribe to daily e-mail updates. You’ll get an e-mail every day announcing decisions released publicly that day.
  • Subscribe to any of our Legal Products feeds. These feeds contain summaries of decisions as and opinions when they are made public and include links to the complete content.
  • Follow us on Twitter. We tweet every decision when it is made public.

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• How do I find military and civilian personnel pay and allowances decisions?
  We haven’t issued these decisions since June 30, 1996, when the responsibilities for deciding military and civilian personnel pay and allowance claims were transferred to the executive branch. Use the “Search Only Legal Decisions” function in the upper right of any site page to find decisions we have issued. We also have copies of older volumes of the Civilian Personnel Law Manual and the Military Personnel Law Manual. For these manuals and more information, see Functions Transferred to the Executive Branch.

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• Can I access laws, pending bills in Congress, federal or state case law, regulations, or executive orders through GAO’s Web site?
  No. They can be found on the Government Printing Office’s Web site, pertinent agency Web sites, and legal databases such as Lexis and Westlaw.

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• Can I shepardize decisions, opinions, or bid protests on GAO’s Web site?
  No, but databases such as Lexis and Westlaw have this capability.

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