Thank you very much. I appreciate your characterization of the SBA, but I do assure you that we have our challenges. In government contracting particularly--and I carve that out because the SBA also does loans and entrepreneurship education and a number of other activities--some of the challenges we face are around how to most effectively implement the contracting programs our legislative body has passed in the statutes.
Since that was what you asked, small businesses most often come to us, from their perspective, with concerns around how they can become qualified in any of the set-aside programs that exist. Getting them the information so they can line up their documentation and comply with all the regulations is sometimes a challenge.
Also, we have certain programs—I mentioned how the SBA handles protests for size standards, whether or not a business is small or other than small, and also for the service-disabled veteran-owned small business. The reason we handle those protests is because we don't, up front, certify companies into that program. It's a self-certifying program.
Then if a party, either the person who finishes in second place in a bidding or another aggrieved party with standing, comes to us and says that wasn't a small business or they knew the ownership and control of this business, and they are not owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans, we then go through handling that protest and that process. So that presents some challenges.
Also, just as an overarching challenge, in any program where you have large federal procurements going on and you have significant dollars flowing through them and you have preferential tools such as sole-source authority, set-aside programs, price evaluation preferences, you're going to have a risk of unscrupulous people taking advantage of those programs through some fraud and abuse. It's a constant challenge on our part, through the things like the technology, training, updating the regulations, to stay on top of that and make sure we're helping the right small businesses and the small business community at large.