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August 25, 2020 By cs

4 lessons from SBA’s $30 million ‘Certify’ platform debacle

Let me know if you’ve heard this one before: An agency hires “experts” to develop an application, spends tens of millions of dollars and the effort falls flat.

This easily could be the story to focus on with Small Business Administration’s Certify.SBA.gov project.

A recent agency inspector general report found the agency brought in U.S. Digital Service experts, spent upwards of $30 million over the last five years to develop the platform only for most of the effort to go to scrap and forcing SBA to basically start over again.

Instead this is a story about perseverance.  It’s a story about lessons learned that every agency should keep in mind. And this is a story that offers an inside view into why federal projects do fail and how simple steps could change the direction of any IT project.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/08/4-lessons-from-sbas-30m-certify-platform-debacle/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: application, beta.certify.sba.gov, certification, Certify.gov, Certify.SBA.gov, IG, mission, requirements, requirements definition, SBA, small business, U.S. Digital Service, USDS

August 4, 2020 By cs

SBA looks to tighten up certification process for women-owned small businesses

Women-owned small businesses, take note: the Small Business Administration is changing the certification process for doing business with the federal government.

Following a 2015 mandate from Congress, SBA will end its self-certification process for women-owned small businesses on October 15.  This comes after the agency’s inspector general found contract awards were going to vendors that didn’t meet the criteria for the program.

Business owners since last Wednesday have been able to submit their applications through the online platform, but SBA will only begin issuing decisions on those submitted applications on Oct. 15, the last day of the self-certification process.

Alisa Sheard, a program manager in SBA Women’s Contracting Office, said businesses already certified through the WOSB program must also go through the new certification process, requiring business owners to copy information found on their SAM.gov profile and transfer it to SBA’s online certification platform.

“Everyone will still need to submit answers to questions and upload documents because there’s no data migration. Those documents that were in the different system are not in this beta certified system, so they will have to upload all of those documents,” Sheard said in an interview.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/07/sba-looks-to-tighten-up-certification-process-for-women-owned-small-businesses/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: beta.certify.sba.gov, certification, Certify.gov, EDWOSB, SAM, SAM.gov, SBA, self-certification, System for Award Management, woman owned business, WOSB

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