Despite a history of complaints to Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs, veterans advocacy groups say VA is still placing far too many hurdles in front of veteran-owned small businesses in its contracting program. VA, meanwhile, says it’s making changes.
VA’s programs for preferentially awarding contracts to veteran-owned small businesses are unlike those of any other agency in government. In a 2006 law, Congress told VA to take a “veterans first” approach to procurement, making service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses its first choice for any given contract and all other veteran-owned small businesses its second choice.
But to deter fraud, Congress also told VA to set up a system to verify contractors’ veteran status before they could get set-aside contracts. That set up a careful balancing act for the agency between detecting potential fraud and making the process as easy as possible for legitimate veteran-owned businesses. And veterans groups are telling Congress VA has allowed that scale to fall way too far in one direction.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/65/3257550/Groups-say-veteran-owned-contracting-still-broken.
