SBA has chosen the National Research Council of the National Academies, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, to evaluate its draft study of women-owned businesses in federal contracting. The study is to determine which industries will be eligible for the long-delayed women’s set-aside procurement program.

After the draft study was completed last year, SBA and OMB said it did not prove that women-owned firms had suffered from discrimination in the federal marketplace. SBA said that meant the set-aside program might not stand up in court. The program was authorized by Congress more than two years ago.

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The Defense Logistics Agency’s new $500 million computer system is plagued by glitches that are causing headaches for employees and contractors, the newspaper Federal Times reported.

The system is supposed to increase efficiency at the agency that buys supplies for the armed services. Instead, employees and contractors told the newspaper, it sometimes directs orders to the wrong address, delays the processing of orders, and makes it more difficult for vendors to access bid opportunities.

A DLA official said the agency is in the process of “fine-tun(ing)” the system.

Only 400 employees are now using the system, and plans to expand it to 4,500 users have been delayed.

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Senate Small Business Chair Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has called on Senate appropriators to increase funding for the HUBZone program in fiscal 2004.

Although Congress has authorized $5 million to $10 million for the program in recent years, no more than $2 million has been appropriated in any year. The fiscal 2003 appropriations act eliminated HUBZone funding altogether.

“Annual funding at $5 million is vital to allow the SBA to help HUBZone firms establish a non-governmental customer base, win federal contracts and, in turn, strengthen the economic growth of our nation’s historically underutilized communities,” she said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), chairman of the subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations, and Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC), the subcommittee’s ranking minority member.

The General Accounting Office reported this spring that SBA’s HUBZone office is not able to verify companies’ claims of eligibility for the program because of lack of resources.

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SBA’s annual Small Business Week, usually held in May, has been shifted to September this year.

A spokesman said he did not know the reason for the change. The activities, including speeches, workshops and awards ceremonies, will take place the week of Sept. 15, one week before the annual Minority Business Enterprise Development Week sponsored by SBA and the Minority Business Development Agency.

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A U.S. Supreme Court ruling exempts some small businesses from provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Companies with fewer than 15 employees are exempt from the law’s requirement that they accommodate disabled workers. The high court ruled April 22 that a firm’s owners do not count as employees.

The case involved an Oregon medical clinic that argued it was too small to be covered by the ADA. The clinic had fewer than 15 employees if the doctors who owned the business were not counted.