Seven of 24
Federal Agencies Meet Small Business Contracting Goals
WASHINGTON
– In an effort to increase the transparency and accountability in small business
contracting, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) today released its first-ever
Small Business Procurement Scorecard. The Scorecard will help agencies measure
their achievements and progress in making contracting opportunities available
to small businesses, improve the accuracy of contracting data regarding small
businesses, and provide the public the opportunity to assess agencies’ performance
in meeting these goals.
Seven federal agencies; the Departments
of Agriculture, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation,
Veterans Affairs, and SBA itself, met their small business contracting goals.
“SBA’s
and the agencies’ commitment to small business contracting results is unprecedented,”
said Clay Johnson, Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management
and Budget. “With clear, outcome-oriented goals, clear, realistically aggressive
plans to achieve them, clearly defined accountability, and frequent tracking of
performance, SBA and the agencies are saying they want to be held most publicly
accountable for contracting with small business at desired levels.”
SBA’s
Scorecard builds on a series of administration initiatives to improve small business
access to federal contracts. At the request of the White House’s Office of
Federal Procurement Policy and SBA, federal agencies spent months reviewing 11
million contract actions from the last two years to cleanse the database of miscoded
contracts. On June 30, federal regulations were changed. Contracts awarded to
small companies acquired by large corporations will no longer count towards federal
agency small business goals – even if the acquisition took place before the
rule change.
“These changes – increased accuracy,
transparency and accountability – provide a real window of opportunity for
America’s small businesses,” said SBA Administrator Steve Preston. “Almost
$5 billion in misreported contracts have been cleaned out of the small business
database. To meet their goals in 2007 and beyond, federal agencies know they will
have to place more new contracts with small businesses. SBA is also increasing
its staff and technical assistance to help our federal partners meet their contracting
needs.”
Small Business Goaling Report
After working
with federal agencies to identify miscoding and anomalies in the contracting database,
SBA released the annual Small Business Goaling Report for FY 2006, and revised
the FY 2005 report. The Goaling Report shows that $77.7 billion in federal contracts
were awarded to small businesses in FY 2006, up $2.7 billion from the previous
year. The revisions reduce the share of contracts awarded to small businesses
in 2005 $4.6 billion from the previously-reported 25.4 percent to 23.4 percent.
For 2006 the figure is 22.8 percent, just short of the small business procurement
goal established by law at 23 percent.
Administrator Preston
cited the progress federal agencies have made towards meeting the five targeted
sub-categories for small businesses procurement, as an example of what can be
accomplished when agencies track progress towards small business goals.
“While
only the target for small disadvantaged business has been met so far,” Preston
said, “SBA is encouraged by the real gains made in every category in 2006.”
Contracts to companies owned by service-disabled veterans increased by 50 percent,
from $2 billion to $3 billion; contracts to women-owned businesses increased by
a billion dollars; contracts to 8(a) companies rose by $700 million, contracts
to HUBZone companies were up $1 billion. “We still have more to do to reach
our targets,” Preston said, “but these are accomplishments that our
federal partners can be proud of.”
About the Scorecard
SBA
rates 24 agencies green, yellow or red, both on whether they reached their annual
small business contracting goals and on their progress on efforts to make contracting
opportunities available to small businesses. To achieve a green rating a federal
agency has to meet its overall small business contracting goal, as well as the
goals for at least three of four subcategories. For their current status, seven
agencies were rated green, five yellow, and 12 were red. In the second category,
under “progress,” 12 agencies were rated green, eight were yellow, and
four were red.
Each federal agency has a different small
business contracting goal, determined annually in consultation with SBA. SBA ensures
that the sum total of all of the goals exceeds the 23 percent target established
by law. The Scorecard will be updated every six months and is publicly available
on the SBA website at www.sba.gov.
“Small businesses
play an important part in growing our nation’s economy, and this Scorecard
will help the agencies achieve contracting results that will keep our small businesses
strong,” said Administrator Paul Denett of the Office of Federal Procurement
Policy (OFPP). “This new tool, along with better data in the goaling reports,
will enable us to identify where we are strong and where need to improve.”
With
more than 5.5 million contracting actions each year, miscodings and errors will
not be completely eliminated from the contracting database. By publicizing the
reports, and providing new tools to facilitate public review of the database,
SBA and OFPP will enlist affected businesses and other stakeholders in the effort
to continuously improve the accuracy and integrity of the procurement data.
| Category | Goal | 2005
Previous | 2005
Revised | 2005
Revised$$ | 2006 | 2006$$ |
Small
Businesses | 23% | 25.4% | 23.4% | $75
Billion | 22.8% | $77.7
Billion |
Small
Disadvantaged
Businesses | 5% | 6.9% | 6.5% | $21
Billion | 6.8% | $77.7
Billion |
Service-Disabled
Vets | 3% | 0.6% | 0.6% | $1.9
Billion | 0.9% | $77.7
Billion |
| Women | 5% | 3.3% | 3.2% | $10.2
Billion | 3.4% | $77.7
Billion |
| HUBZone | 3% | 1.9% | 1.9% | $6.2
Billion | 2.1% | $7.2
Billion |
| 8(a) | N/A | 3.3% | 3.7% | $11.8
Billion | 3.7% | $12.5
Billion |
The goaling reports released
today by SBA are available at http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/goals/index.html.
Website:
http://www.sba.gov/
