woman owned business | The Contracting Education Academy

August 17, 2020 By cs

Agencies exceed SBA’s women-owned small business contracting goal after years of falling short

Small businesses have a big stake in the federal marketplace, and the Small Business Administration sets a high bar for the rest of the federal government to do business with them.

*Click on image above to see complete Small Business Scorecard.*

Agencies met many of those standards last year, according to SBA’s annual Small Business Procurement Scorecard, awarding nearly $133 billion in small-business prime contracts and exceeding SBA’s goal to have 5% of prime contracts go to women-owned small businesses.

This marks only the second year that agencies met or exceeded the women-owned small business contracting goal since SBA set that benchmark, although agencies have fallen just shy of the governmentwide goal in recent years.

Eight agencies earned an ‘A+’ on the scorecard and 14 agencies received an ‘A.’ Agencies that showed the most improvement include the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Veterans Affairs — which both went from a ‘B’ to an ‘A.’

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/08/agencies-exceed-women-owned-small-business-contracting-goal-years-after-falling-short/

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/

November 27, 2019 By cs

New York-based company was caught allegedly selling Chinese-made hardware to the DoD

Aventura Technologies, based out of Long Island, New York, was just busted by the government after allegedly having fraudulently sold security gear to the U.S. military for years, racking up millions in federal contract money.

According to Aventura’s website, which as of November 12 is still up and running, the company claimed to be a “true single-source manufacturer providing end-to-end hardware and software solutions.”

Some of these hardware solutions included ground-based radar, turnstiles, and closed-circuit television systems, all of which the company claimed were manufactured in America. Between 2007 and 2018, Aventura reportedly supplied various branches of the U.S. military with over $20 million dollars of said equipment.

From November 2010 to the present day, it’s estimated that Aventura pulled in over $88 million in sales to both the government and the private sector.

The sting that eventually brought down Aventura was a few years in the making, including an anonymous tip in 2017, and the discovery of Chinese lettering on a body camera by Air Force personnel the following year.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/gearscout/irons/2019/11/14/this-new-york-based-company-was-just-caught-allegedly-selling-chinese-made-hardware-to-the-dod/

June 27, 2018 By AMK

SBA IG: 89 percent of WOSB sole source contracts were improper

Nearly 90% of women-owned small business sole source contracts reviewed by the SBA Office of Inspector General (OIG) were improper, according to a startling report issued last week.

In the study, the SBA OIG concluded that because of pervasive flaws in the award of WOSB and EDWOSB sole source contracts, “there was no assurance that these contracts were awarded to firms that were eligible to receive sole-source awards under the Program.” And if that wasn’t enough, the SBA OIG reiterated its position that, as a legal matter, it is improper to award any WOSB or EDWOSB sole source contract to a self-certified company.

The SBA OIG studied 56 WOSB and EDWOSB sole source contracts awarded between January 1, 2016 and April 30, 2017. This pool “represented 81 percent of the Program’s contracts awarded on a sole-source basis for this time period.”

The results were startling: SBA OIG determined that “Federal agencies’ contracting officers and firms did not comply with Federal regulations for 50 of the 56 Program sole-source contracts, valued at $52.2 million.” As a result, there was no assurance that these contracts were awarded to eligible WOSBs and EDWOSBs.

Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/women-owned-small-business-program/sba-inspector-general-89-of-wosb-sole-source-contracts-were-improper/

March 25, 2016 By AMK

COs told to check with SBA on WOSB certifications

On Wednesday, March 23, 2016, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced on its website that for the next “several weeks” federal Contracting Officers (COs) will need to check with the SBA to verify self-certifications submitted by women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) competing for contract set-asides.

The reason for this temporary change is a planned migration of WOSB records from SBA’s General Login System (GLS) repository to a new portal to be located at https://certify.sba.gov.

SBA says that the on-line repository where WOSBs have been uploading ownership and control documentation has been inactivated. SBA’s notice indicates that the WOSB repository will be replaced within “several weeks” by a new portal that will support the WOSB program.

The new portal is located at https://certify.sba.gov however, as of March 25, the website is marked: “This site is a work in progress.”

SBA’s existing rules stipulate that small businesses interested in responding to a solicitation set aside for WOSBs must first submit a checklist of certification documentation. Once certification uploads are submitted, Contracting Officers are responsible for checking the repository to ensure all required documents have been submitted.

During the period where the new portal is not fully functional, it is unclear how WOSBs that have not previously uploaded their certification documentation will satisfy the 13 CFR 127.300(e) certification requirements.

Until SBA’s new portal is fully functional, the SBA is directing Contracting Officers to contact the SBA to request verification of self-certification compliance by specific WOSBs.

The instructions SBA has issued are as follows:

SBA will review the Repository on behalf of a CO. A CO may request that SBA review the Repository on their behalf by sending an email to wosb@sba.gov(link sends e-mail) with the following in the subject line:

“PENDING AWARD UNDER FAR 19.505(e) VERIFICATION REQUEST- SOLICITATION NUMBER [insert solicitation number].”

In the body of the email, the CO should provide the following: provide the apparent successful offeror’s DUNS, EIN, FIRM NAME, OWNER NAME; indicate whether the pending award is a WOSB or EDWOSB set-aside or sole source award; specify the NAICS code assigned to the procurement; and identify the State where the CO is located. Within 2 business days, SBA will perform the necessary check to determine whether the apparently successful offeror has filed all the required eligibility documents and provide the CO with an email response which either: (a) notifies the CO that all required documents have been provided or (b) identifies which documents are missing in order to allow the CO to file a status protest in accordance with SBA regulations and the FAR.

Emails for this information will be processed only for Contracting Officers.

More information on the WOSB program and the features of the new portal can be found at: https://www.sba.gov/content/women-owned-small-business-program.

Small businesses have a big stake in the federal marketplace, and the Small Business Administration sets a high bar for the rest of the federal government to do business with them.

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

Aventura Technologies, based out of Long Island, New York, was just busted by the government after allegedly having fraudulently sold security gear to the U.S. military for years, racking up millions in federal contract money.

Nearly 90% of women-owned small business sole source contracts reviewed by the SBA Office of Inspector General (OIG) were improper, according to a startling report issued last week.

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