SBA’s Mentor-Protege Program

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is issuing this verification inspection to assess the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) corrective actions for four recommendations from the September 17, 2019 Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Evaluation of SBA’s All Small Mentor-Protege Program (Report 19-17). 

The objectives of the report were to determine whether SBA implemented effective controls to ensure 1) it conducted initial application reviews and annual evaluations in accordance with the All Small Mentor-Protege program regulations and 2) it measured program success.

We initiated this verification inspection to follow up on the four recommendations and determine whether SBA’s corrective actions were still operating as intended. We determined that Recommendations 1 and 4 were fully implemented; however, SBA management has not fully implemented Recommendations 2 and 3. We will reopen Recommendation 2 to track management’s implementation and will work with the agency to establish a target date for completing corrective actions through the audit follow-up process. We will not reopen Recommendation 3, as management resumed conducting annual evaluations, which we confirmed during our review. Management agreed with reopening Recommendation 2, and the agency’s comments are responsive to the recommendation.