October 28, 2011 - “The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) conducts its contracting with small businesses in good faith and in the spirit of the “Veterans First” legislation that gives preference to eligible Veteran-owned small businesses (VOSBs) and service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs). This law gave VA new authority “for purposes of meeting [its] goals” for contracting with these firms, and VA is complying by exceeding those goals. VA will continue to strongly support eligible Veteran-owned small businesses who seek to do business with the federal government.It is VA’s position that procurement professionals should continue to use the Federal Supply Schedules Program as one of the many contracting vehicles available to meet the needs of the Department. The GAO recommendation does not change how VA will acquire goods and services in support of its mission. VA expects this issue ultimately will be decided by the courts. Since the June 2007 effective date, VA has consistently interpreted the law as a small business set aside program with Veteran small businesses having priority over any other class of small business when conducting full and open competition contracts.
VA again specifically explained that ‘this rule does not apply to Federal Supply Schedule task or delivery orders’ when promulgating the final rule (74 Federal Register 64619 (December 8, 2009)), implementing the portions of the Veterans Benefits, Healthcare, and Information Technology Act of 2006 (Public Law 106-491) providing opportunities for SDVOSBs and VOSBs to increase their contracting and subcontracting with VA. ”
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