SDVOSB goal met?

The White House’s online Small Business Dashboard has been showing some good news for service-disabled veteran-owned small contracting firms.

As of Feb. 18, the government was reporting that 3.38% of eligible federal contracts went to SDVOSBs in fiscal 2013. The goal is 3%.

Total SDVOSB awards in fiscal 2013, as reported to date, were $12 billion. Official tallies come out later this year.

On the other hand, a new study by the Rand Corp. suggested that the government needs to reduce barriers facing SDVOSBs and increase the priority of the SDVOSB goal.

Barriers include the definitions of contracting goals rather than obligations, lack of understanding among SDVOSBs about the program and barriers to receiving subcontracts in the award stage that had been planned in the bidding stage, the Rand study showed.

More information:
White House Small Business Dashboard: http://smallbusiness.data.gov/
Rand report: http://goo.gl/Sxcg0B

Climate resilience fund

President Obama said he would allocate $1 billion for climate change resilience projects across the country in his fiscal 2015 budget.

The projects are intended to help prepare communities for extreme weather and to develop new technologies and weather analytics.

Jailed for fraud

Keith and Angela Johnson of Maryville, TN will serve time in prison for conspiring to defraud the government on military vehicle parts purchases in Afghanistan, the Justice Department announced.

Keith Johnson will serve 30 months, and his wife, six months, followed by another six months of house arrest.

The couple also agreed to forfeit more than $2 million.

The fraud involved Keith Johnson steering awards to a firm they created. Their company received $11 million worth of orders.

Intel contractor counts

The intelligence community is not keeping an accurate inventory of contractor personnel, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

“GAO identified a number of limitations in the inventory that collectively limit the comparability, accuracy, and consistency of the information reported by the civilian Intelligence Community elements as a whole,” the report said.

Also, documentation was lacking for 37% of the 287 records reviewed.

More information:
GAO report: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-204