Most of the time, when people discuss the SBA’s entrepreneurial development programs, they are singing their praises in no uncertain terms. Which is why it was both surprising and understandable that witnesses at last week’s House Small Business Committee hearing appeared to have been instructed to can the beatitudes and tell us what’s wrong with them. After all, no matter how great any federal program or public/private partnership may be, there is always room for improvement. Rising nobly to the occasion, said witnesses came armed with a litany of problems they identified with the programs and suggestions for solving those problems. The problems identified included uneven and inefficient service delivery, lack of an accreditation system, performance measures that exclude outcomes and poor exploitation of available technology.

The programs under review, for the uninitiated, were the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), the Women’s Business Centers (WBCs) and the Service Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE). As is usually the case in this sort of scenario, some of the suggestions seemed extremely sound. For example, skilled deployment of online learning tools and developing uniform counseling standards would greatly improve the user’s experiences of entrepreneurial development program services. And, of course, better performance measures than “bodies through the door” would help everybody. Another suggestion, to fold all the entrepreneurial development programs into one, is unlikely to fly with various business owner demographics. And of course, everybody suggested that more money be appropriated for the programs, all of which have been underfunded for years. That, at least, is likely to be taken care of with President Obama’s first budget.