Small Business: HUBZone Program Suffers From Reporting and Implementation Difficulties

Abstract

The Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Act of 1997 established a program to provide assistance in securing federal contracts to small businesses located in HUBZones. HUBZones are metropolitan area census tracts or nonmetropolitan counties in which low-income levels or high unemployment rates qualify them as economically distressed. Also, all federally-recognized Indian reservations are HUBZones. The purpose of the HUBZone program is to increase employment opportunities, investment, and economic development in these areas. The HUBZone Act established (1) eligibility requirements that firms must meet to participate in the program, (2) contracting preferences that federal agencies can use to award contracts to firms certified by SBA as qualified HUBZone firms, and (3) goals for program participation by HUBZone firms as a percent of the total value of prime contract awards. The act identified ten federal agencies for initial participation in the program through the end of fiscal year 2000, and three more agencies were added in November 1999. (See appendix I for a list of the 13 agencies.) Currently, the HUBZone program applies to all federal agencies.3 SBA must certify that a firm qualifies for participation before federal agencies can award a contract under the program. To be qualified, the firm must apply with SBA and meet the following requirements: The firm must be a small business owned and controlled by one or more U.S. citizens.4 The firm's principal office must be located in a HUBZone. * Finally, at least 35 percent of the firm's employees must reside in a HUBZone. Once SBA has certified that a firm is qualified, SBA adds the firm's name, address and certification date to its list of Qualified HUBZone Small Business Concerns maintained on SBA's World Wide Web site. In addition, SBA adds this certification to the firm's profile in SBA's on-line PRO-Net database, which contains information supplied by over 200,000 small businesses.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA396737

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accounting
  • Acquisition
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Congress
  • Contracts
  • Data Centers
  • Economic Development
  • Electronic Mail
  • Geographic Regions
  • Law
  • Procurement
  • Small Business
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States
  • Websites
  • World Wide Web

Fields of Study

  • Business

Readers

  • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.
  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Government and Public Administration Law.