The SBA performs only “minimal oversight” of third-party certifiers for the woman-owned small business program, and thus “lacks reasonable assurance that only eligible businesses receive WOSB set-aside contracts,” says the GAO in a recent report on the WOSB Program.
The GAO report identifies numerous weaknesses in the WOSB certification system, and provides a number of recommendations to strengthen WOSB Program oversight.
Only the SBA has the power to grant an extension to the short time deadline for a company to respond to a SBA size protest.
As demonstrated in a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision, although the SBA’s practice is to require the procuring agency to grant a concurrent extension, the procuring agency’s agreement alone–in the absence of a corresponding SBA extension–will not permit a protested company to file a late response.
8(a) Program improvements are needed to allow more disadvantaged firms to receive 8(a) contracts, according to a recent report issued by the SBA Office of Inspector General.
In its report, the SBA OIG credits the SBA with positive steps taken to improve the 8(a) Program, but says that more must be done to ensure that 8(a) business development assistance reaches more 8(a) Program participants.
Once an agency has completed its past performance evaluation it is not required to seek updated past performance information from offerors.
As demonstrated in a recent GAO bid protest decision, an agency may rely on the most recent past performance information available at the time of evaluation, and is not required to seek more recent information at the time of the source selection.
GAO bid protests were the focus of my presentation at this year’s Navy Gold Coast conference in San Diego. If you weren’t able to make it to Gold Coast in August, I have good news: the conference organizers have made all of this year’s presentations available online, free of charge.
My GAO bid protest presentation covers the GAO’s jurisdiction, who can file a protest, the timeliness rules, how the protest process works, protest outcomes, success rates, and more. To view my Gold Coast presentation on GAO bid protests, just follow this link. And don’t forget to check out the other great presentations from this year’s Gold Coast conference, too.
A Bulgarian immigrant’s thick accent and lack of English proficiency were not evidence of bias, and did not support the immigrant’s 8(a) Program application.
In a recent 8(a) Program decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals expressed sympathy for the language difficulties many immigrants face, but held that such difficulties, by themselves, do not constitute evidence of “social disadvantage” for 8(a) Program purposes because the 8(a) Program requires a showing of bias or prejudice.
My friend Guy Timberlake of the American Small Business Coalition has launched GovConChat, which Guy described as a “candid and informative conversation with movers, shakers and thought-leaders from around the federal contracting community.”
Earlier this week, I joined Guy for a GovConChat segment. We discussed several major changes that could be implemented as a result of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, as well as a recent court case holding that an offeror did not qualify for a GSA Schedule task order when the offeror’s affiliate (but not the offeror itself) held a GSA Schedule contract. You can listed to our entire chat by following this link.
GovConChat is a great new resource to help contractors obtain perspectives from across the industry. Go check it out, and let me know if there is a particular blog post–or other government contracts legal issue–that you would like to hear me discuss in a future segment.