The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently released its small business procurement scorecard for fiscal year 2011. This scorecard measures government-wide performance in not only contracts awarded to small businesses but also subcontracts awarded by prime Government contractors so small business subcontractors. It gave the overall program results a "B".
As you know, the Government established goals for small business procurement. Those goals have remained fairly constant over the years (although there is currently pending legislation to increase some of them). The goals are expressed as a percentage of procurement dollars: small businesses - 23%, women-owned small businesses - 5%, small disadvantaged businesses - 5%, service disabled veteran owned small business - 3%, and HUBZone - 3%.
In fiscal year 2011, Government agencies awarded contracts worth $91.5 billion to small businesses equating to 21.65% of total procurement dollars. That figure did not meet the goal and is down from 22.66% in fiscal year 2010. The SBA report card also showed dips in all the other categories except service disabled veteran owned small businesses which went from 2.5% to 2.65%. The Government met its goal in only one category; small disadvantaged businesses.
Prime contractor also have goals for awarding subcontracts to small businesses. These goals flow from contractual requirements and are the same as the Government goals except for one category. Generally speaking, prime contractors performed better than Government agencies in meeting their small business goals.
SBA is not pleased with the trend line from fiscal year 2010 to 2011. Look for increased emphasis on small business contracting in the coming months.
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