Alliant head scratcher

Yesterday, the General Services Administration announced that 72 companies won spots on the Alliant Small Business contract.

That's great news for the companies, but then during their press conference to announce the awards, GSA officials said that all the small businesses had to now certify that they are still small. If they aren't, then they don't get the contract.

While I applaud GSA's desire to only award contracts to small businesses, I'm befuddled by why they didn't certify as part of the selection process.

Why publicly announce a group of winners, only to risk having to later take contracts away from certain companies?

Maybe this is the way the process has always worked, but it doesn't make sense to me.

It's not like GSA was in a rush to get this one out. It has already been delayed more than a year, what would another week or two mean?