Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Certification at Scale: District Department of Transportation’s Approach to the USDOT’s Interim Final Rule

Managing disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) certifications can be complex, but not when agencies use the right tools.  

Stephanie Jenkins, business relationship specialist for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) in Washington, D.C., focuses on certification for the transportation infrastructure businesses within the city’s eight wards along with her skilled colleagues. 

DDOT is part of a unified program with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit (WMATA), which makes up the District of Columbia Unified Certification program (DCUCP). 

In addition, DDOT is responsible for:

However, with recent changes brought forth by the US Department of Transportation’s Interim Final Rule (USDOT IFR) in late 2025, certification efforts for businesses operating on DDOT’s projects faced a new challenge.  

“The IFR ruling requires firms to submit a personal narrative as a part of their re-evaluation process to maintain DBE certification,” Jenkins said. “Many of these firms find the personal narrative to be quite challenging.”

The personal narrative portion of IFR requires a written statement from each business owner currently certified as a DBE to describe specific, individualized barriers faced in education, employment, or business, and how those obstacles demonstrate social and economic disadvantage resulting in measurable economic harm. With the personal narrative requirements, race and gender are no longer presumed indicators of disadvantage, which is a significant change for DBEs. 

Per the IFR, firms must submit a Personal Narrative and a Personal Net Worth statement to be recertified as DBEs by DDOT. Without these submissions, DBE goals will not be met until the recertification process is complete. DDOT has prioritized recertification for home-state businesses that are currently active on a contract. 

“DDOT currently certifies 481 home state firms and more than 1,351 interstate firms,” Jenkins said. “To make the recertification process easier, I’ve been able to run reports within B2Gnow to filter out which firms are our home state firms and which are interstate firms. B2Gnow has helped quite a bit with prioritizing our home state firms for recertification.”

Jenkins said the strategic filtering available in B2Gnow’s certification module helps ensure DDOT works on the recertification process without needing to recertify the entirety of its DBE directory.

“Without this module, the recertification process could take months,” Jenkins said. “But the system is able to track all mandatory documents needed to complete a single application. A lot of states have not even begun the process of reevaluating because they lack information, but B2Gnow helps us provide them with information they need to complete their applications.”

Click here to listen as DDOT discusses the benefits of recertification using B2Gnow.