Pennsylvania DGS reduces diverse biz certification times by a third

PA News - Published Jul 25, 2023

The Pennsylvania Department Of General Services (DGS) has announced that bureaucratic improvements it has made have reduced the time taken to certify small minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses through the DGS's Bureau of Diversity, Inclusion and Small Business Opportunities (BDISBO) by a third.

Currently, S/M/W/VBEs can expect a turnaround time of approximately 10 days between submitting their application for certification and receiving a decision. Prior to recent updates, that time was approximately 15 days. The updates that were made include software improvments and staffing expansions within BDISBO. In addition, separately from the bureaucratic efficiencies, BDISBO has updated its website with the goal of making necessary application information easier to find, and lengthened the recertification renewal from every year to every two years. BDISBO is also remaining committed to offering a slate of various certification training and outreach sessions, awareness campaigns, and making efforts to ensure prompt payments to subcontractors on goverment work.

"Reducing the Bureau's certification time was a change that we realized we could implement immediately and would have a positive impact on the small businesses looking to work with the commonwealth," said DGS Secretary Reggie McNeil in a statement.

Red the press release from DGS at https://www.media.pa.gov/pages/DGS_details.aspx?newsid=175.