In a dramatic turnaround, the Veterans Affairs Department has approved the majority of the initial requests to verify veteran ownership of a business in the last 10 months, after a year of denying most of those requests, according to new information released by the department.

The surprising reversal was disclosed exclusively to Set-Aside Alert by the VA’s public affairs office. The release was in response to a request for data about the current verification rates for veteran-owned firms.

However, the latest figures also are causing raised eyebrows as they appear to contradict recent statements from a senior VA executive. On Aug. 21, Tom Leney, executive director of small and veterans business programs at the VA, told a veterans group that the agency continued to experience a high rate of initial denials. Leney did not respond to requests to comment on the apparent discrepancy.

Meanwhile, the latest statistics released by the VA public affairs office indicate that the initial high rate of denials for affirming veteran-owned business status under a 2010 law has dropped dramatically.

From October 2010 to September 2011, out of 5,456 initial applications processed, 69% were denied and 31% were approved, the VA said. There were 3,750 denials and 1,706 approvals.

From September 2011 to August 2012, out of 4,166 initial applications processed, 73% were approved and 27% denied, according to the VA. That adds up to 3,040 approved and 1,126 denied.

Those figures apply to business owner applications for initial verification, reverification, fast track and simplified verification of veteran-owned and service-disabled veteran-owned status.

The VA is crediting enhancements to the application process for the hike in approvals.

“In 2011, we were at about a 65% denial rate and that figure is now reversed due to the improvements in process and the Verification Assistance Program,” Josephine Schuda, a spokeswoman for the VA, said in an emailed statement.

The VA began using more stringent criteria for verifying veteran ownership and eligibility for preferential treatment in federal contracting under a 2010 law that aimed to reduce fraud in the program. Fiscal 2011 was the first full year in which the conditions of that law were applied.

Veterans groups had pressed for the tougher criteria to enhance the integrity of the program but were dismayed to see high rates of denials during the first year the new criteria were applied.

Meanwhile, Leney’s comments about ongoing denials for the verification requests are stirring questions. He spoke at a Veterans Small Business Forum meeting held at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Leney told the group that a high rate of 65% initial denials was resulting in requests for reconsideration that could take up to 200 days to process. The reconsiderations take manpower, which reduces staff available to deal with the initial applications. Leney said the department is working toward instituting 16-hour days, adding manpower and seeking to contract with application counselors to speed up the processing.

“We are seeing a high rate of initial denials,” Leney said at the meeting. “Those applications are clogging the system.”

Richard Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs at the Vietnam Veterans of America, who participated in the meeting, told Set-Aside Alert that in light of the new figures released by the VA, Leney’s remarks at the meeting were confusing.

“It is puzzling why he would not mention the change,” Weidman said. Furthermore, he said his group is still hearing anecdotally from its members that a large number of companies are still being denied. “Our goal is to protect the businesses,” Weidman said.

According to Leney, many of the denied applications have a “single point of failure,” meaning that they may be missing a single key piece of information. At the meeting, he urged veteran business owners to use the VA’s application assessment tools, guidance document and available counseling services to prepare their applications for verification and reverification.

Weidman said the VA ought to be providing more consistent help to the veterans to identify missing or incorrect data before issuing a denial.

“Right now, a veteran can get a review of an application and get three different answers. That is not right,” Weidman said.