On February 12, 2013, Thomas Leney, the Executive Director for Small and Veteran Business Programs at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, made a special appearance at the monthly VET-Force meeting held in Washington, D.C. For over an hour, veteran business owners and advocates had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Leney’s discussion of the VA’s VetBiz Vendor Information Pages (“VIP”) Verification Program (the “VA VetBiz Verification Program”), as well as ask questions. The following illustrates a few highlights of this discussion:
- Processing Times – According to Mr. Leney, the average processing time for an initial verification request is 57 days. The average processing time for a request for reconsideration is 147 days. These statistics are a bit different from, but in the same general timeframe, as those included in a table that was very recently posted on the VetBiz website (58 days and 131 days, respectively). This table also includes current statistics relating to the VetBiz process, including statistics on the percentage of successful verification applications and requests for reconsideration. Access the VetBiz table of “Average Verification Processing Time(s)” here.
- Verification Counseling Program – Along with reading the Verification Assistance Briefs and taking the Verification Self-Assessment Tool, the Center for Veterans Enterprises (CVE) highly recommends that veteran business owners take advantage of the Verification Counseling Program. As Mr. Leney noted, 85% of businesses that used the Verification Counseling Program were successful in achieving verification (compared with an average 59% success rate for applications processed during FY 2013).
- Alignment with Small Business Administration (SBA) Regulations – Mr. Leney stressed that the regulations for the VetBiz are aligned with the regulations for the service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) program set forth in the SBA regulations. However, as a VetForce member pointed out, if we assume that this is true, the unusually high denial rate for the VetBiz Program demonstrates that the issues preventing successful verification may exist in the evaluation phase.
- Transparency – Mr. Leney relayed that in the interest of government transparency, the CVE plans to publish its Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of its VA VetBiz Verification Program on the VetBiz website.
- Government-Wide Verification Program – As of now, the VA VetBiz Verification Program applies only to VA contracts, meaning that a business need not be verified in VetBiz to compete for SDVOSB set-aside contracts issued by other federal agencies. As Mr. Leney noted, the intention is to move towards a Government-wide verification program. As illustrated in the recent GAO report on the VetBiz Program, however, issues with devising long-term solutions and other flaws in the still-developing Program prevent that from occurring any time soon. This GAO report is available here.
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Also, for further reading on the VA VetBiz Verification Program (including helpful resources and links), visit my frequently-updated VetBiz FAQs page here.
