Some veterans who own businesses are learning how they could benefit from a new set-aside program. Although the program has been taking shape for more than a year, details are only now becoming known.

The set-aside program establishes a goal of having 3 percent of federal contracts go to small businesses owned by service- disabled veterans, either as prime contractors or subcontractors. In a $59.8 billion federal information technology market, that means at least $1.8 billion should flow to qualified firms, said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer at Federal Sources Inc.

At least one significant area of confusion remains, however, making it difficult for some business owners to use the program. The set-aside applies only to companies owned by veterans who were disabled in military service. But veterans want to know how qualifying companies rank relative to other special business categories.

Teresa Lewis, assistant administrator of the Office of Federal Contract Assistance for Veteran Business Owners at the Small Business Administration, said contracting officers will treat the businesses the same as they treat 8(a) and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) firms.

Despite that clarification, however, many details about the set-aside program remain unclear, said Scott Denniston, director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

SBA's role is to write program rules and add them to Section 13 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Denniston said. The problem is that contracting officers do not take the section as gospel, he said. Instead, they look at the Federal Acquisition Regulation, and they find differences.

The CFR section tells contracting officers to determine first whether the contract requirements could be fulfilled by prison industries or qualified nonprofit agencies for people who are blind or severely disabled and whether an 8(a) company is already doing the work. If not, the CFR language states that the contracting officer should consider setting the contract aside for 8(a) firms, HUBZone firms or businesses owned by service-disabled veterans.