Top SBA Management & Performance Challenges in Fiscal Year 2024
May 28, 2024
Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor
Top SBA Management & Performance Challenges in Fiscal Year 2024
SBA’s Inspector General published their Spring 2024 Semiannual Report to Congress, which summarizes their work from October 2023 to March 2024. The OIG report outlines the top eight challenges facing the SBA during that period:
Challenge 1: SBA’s economic relief programs are susceptible to significant fraud risks and vulnerabilities.
Challenge 2: Eligibility concerns in small business contracting programs undermine the reliability of contracting goal achievements.
Challenge 3: SBA faces significant challenges in IT investments, system development, and security controls.
Challenge 4: SBA risk management and oversight practices need improvement to ensure the integrity of loan programs.
Challenge 5: SBA’s management and monitoring of the 8(a) Business Development program needs improvement.
Challenge 6: Identification of improper payments in SBA’s 7(a) loan program remains a challenge.
Challenge 7: SBA’s Disaster Assistance program must balance competing priorities to deliver prompt assistance but prevent fraud.
Challenge 8: SBA needs robust grants management oversight.
While the challenges are not ranked in order of importance, the Inspector General put COVID-19 economic relief programs at the top because it is the most critical challenge. Inspector General Hannibal Ware shares that Congress did not provide the requested appropriation for the SBA OIG in fiscal year 2024 despite their achievements in clawing back funds.
Inspector General Ware writes, “Already, our oversight capacity is 13 percent less than the 240 positions that would have been authorized by the President’s FY 2024 budget for this office, and we expect this number to decrease significantly without congressional intervention.”
“We have estimated that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This illustrates that we need the resources to continue bringing fraudsters to justice and help return taxpayer funds, not reward criminals who exploited a system meant to assist struggling small business owners and entrepreneurs during an economic crisis,” Inspector General Ware continues.