The breadth and depth of protests heard by GAO may lead even a seasoned government contractor to overlook the limitations of GAO’s jurisdiction.
As one contractor recently found, the GAO generally will not consider protests based on an allegation that the agency should not have referred an adverse responsibility determination to the SBA for a certificate of competency review.
Continue readingOn December 19, 2014, then-President Obama signed the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act into law. The 2015 NDAA eliminated the statutory basis for federal agencies to award women-owned small business set-aside contracts to self-certified companies. In essence, then, the 2015 NDAA effectively eliminated WOSB self-certification.
Flash forward almost four years, and the SBA has not yet implemented a WOSB certification program. In fact, the SBA hasn’t even proposed rules to implement such a program. Instead, although the SBA continues to license a few third-party certifiers, the SBA also continues to say that WOSBs “can self-certify directly at certify.sba.gov by answering questions and uploading documents.”
So where the heck is the mysteriously missing SBA WOSB certification program? And is it even legal for the SBA to continue allowing WOSB self-certification?