SBA OIG Recommends Improved Oversight of 8(a) Continuing Eligibility

Last year, we wrote about the SBA’s Office of Inspector General’s concerns with the SBA’s review of potential 8(a) participants’ eligibility. In this report, the OIG made three recommendations aimed at improving to verify applicants’ eligibility.

Just last week, the OIG released a new report analyzing the 8(a) Program. This report picks up where the earlier report left off—it addressed several issues in the SBA’s evaluation of participants’ continuing eligibility.

The results of this report are rather alarming: based on its review, the OIG identified almost $127 million in 8(a) set-aside awards to ineligible firms.

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8(a) Program: Participant Terminated For Missing Annual Review

Participants in the SBA’s 8(a) Program must timely submit their annual review packages to the SBA.

In a recent decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals held that the SBA may terminate a participant from the 8(a) Program for failing to provide the required information–even if the 8(a) company’s owner has had personal difficulties that contributed to the failure.

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8(a) Program: SBA Final Rule Makes Important Changes

The 8(a) Program regulations will undergo some significant changes as part of the major final rule recently released by the SBA, and effective August 24, 2016.

Here at SmallGovCon, we’ve already covered big changes to the SDVOSB Program and HUBZone Program brought about by the new SBA rule.  But the 8(a) program is affected by the new rule too, and important changes involving eligibility, the application process, sole source awards, NHOs, and more will kick in later this month.

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