For the past eight years, the veteran business community has repeatedly sought to obtain contract and subcontract performance data on both government agencies and private prime contractors.

The availability of government data has been sporadically available but private performance data has been continuously obfuscated, often in cooperation and with the complicity of government agencies.

The “Saga of Forms 294 & 295” has been widely recited as one of the myths regarding the responsibility of government agencies to support service-disabled and veteran-owned businesses.

The consistent demands by the veteran business community to review the public information reports and plans of billion-dollar subcontracting promises made by private corporations when obtaining contract awards has been consistently withheld by the three parties responsible by regulation for their publication: the awarding agency, the awardee and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

The mystery of the GSA forms 294 AND 295 shell game has been a mystery to the veteran business community, especially in view of the assurances and protestations by government agencies that the information is forthcoming in a reasonable format. The major corporate awardees have simply titled the public information contract performance rewards as their “private property” and not available to anybody.

It is crucial for the veteran business community to continue to inform the U.S. Congress that the public information records illustrate whether billion-dollar federal contractors are keeping the promises they make when soliciting taxpayer dollars.

It is professed public policy that taxpayer revenues used to procure goods and services should present opportunities for smaller businesses and especially veteran-owned businesses to participate in the award or sub-award process.

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