The small business set-aside parity issue heats up again, as a judge finds in favor of HUBZone contracting priority. 

Congress and the SBA have sought to end this legal issue by passing legislation that would bring parity to all of the small business set-aside programs -- enabling contracting officers to choose among the existing set-asides so as to most effectively utilize all programs.

The National Association of Small Business Contractors will be active in supporting this legislation when Congress comes back from the summer recess.

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Gulf Coast small business might have missed out on billions of dollars in prime and subcontracting opportunities after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, according to a new study by the Government Accountability Office.

The report, which the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship requested, found that federal agencies awarded $20.5 billion nationwide between August 2005 and September 2009 to clean up and recover from the devastating storms. But small businesses in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas -- the four states hit hardest by the 2005 hurricanes -- combined to receive nearly $2.9 billion in contracts, or less than 14 percent of the total awards, GAO found.

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The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council (Councils) are proposing to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to standardize use of Unique Procurement Instrument Identifiers (PIID) throughout the Government.

This move will bring greater transparency to contracting and make it easier to track contracts/awards across the federal system.

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Today, President Obama issued a memorandum announcing strong steps for his Administration to learn how federal agency spending can be more fair and open to small business contractors, bring greater transparency to the contracting process and data, and act to invigorate federal spending with small firms.

Unfortunately, this announcement most likely comes as an early warning of sub-par FY 2009 achievement of small business federal contracting goals (this data has not yet been publicly released) and continued pressure by small businesses and trade association leaders to end the long standing failure of the federal government to assure a fair and open marketplace inclusive of small businesses including businesses owned by women, minorities, socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, and service-disabled veterans.

Even if these steps are being taken now to lessen the impending bad news, we can be heartened by the seriousness of President Obama's response. As detailed below, Mr. Obama is bringing together a very senior level Task Force from a wide range of federal agencies and policy leaders to provide proposals and recommendations within 120 days, and is establishing within 90 days a website to bring greater accountability and transparency, allow for the oversight of the Federal Government's progress in small business contracting, and to bring improved collection, verification, and availability of Federal procurement data.

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HOT:  Act now!  Tell Congress to investigate this issue and clean up the small business federal contracting goaling data.  Sign the petition and contact your Congressional leaders.

The U.S. Small Business Administrator, Office of Inspector General recently released report finding that:

1. The SBA certified to the accuracy of its FY 2008 contracting data, although 92 percent of the contracting actions in the sample used by the Inspector General contained one or more inaccurate or incomplete data elements in FPDS.
2. While the SBA had developed a data quality plan for FY 2008, it did not fully implement the plan.
3. Due to the volume of errors identified in FPDS, it appears that contracting personnel did not review FPDS data inputs to ensure they reflected accurate information, as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR).
4. While the accuracy of some data elements improved in FY 2009, overall there was a higher rate of error in the FY 2009 data.
5. Approximately 97 percent of the contract actions in their sample contained one or more inaccurate or incomplete data elements, indicating again that SBA contracting personnel were not properly reviewing data entries.
6. SBA's Goaling Report may contain inaccurate information concerning the extent to which the Agency met its small business goals.

Read the full report.