Are You Meeting the Small Business Goals? Analysis from BGov

Steve Ressler

13 years ago

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In government procurement, there is an emphasis on ensuring a variety of certain types of business have a chance to compete for procurement dollars. These set-aside programs were created in 1977 with the flagship small business program having a target of 23% of all federal procurements.

It’s an interesting difference between government and private sector but I think it makes a lot of sense for government to use its purchasing power to help spur growth of specific types of businesses.

For example, there are

SDVOSB	Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business
WOB	Woman-Owned Small Business
HUBZONE	HUBZone Small Business
SB	Contract-Officer-Determined Small Business
SDB	Small Disadvantaged Business
VET	Veteran-Owned Small Business
AN	Alaskan Natives

I spent this morning looking at the data in BGOV analyzing the difference amongst agencies in terms of set-aside spending and found it pretty interesting.

For example, 2.3% of Army contracts go to SDVOSB, 3.79% to WOB while 21.73% go to SB and 3.9% to veterans owned. On the other hand, 13.59% of Department of Interior contracts go to WOB and 50% go to SB.

It is not surprising that Veterans Affairs has the highest percentage of contracts go to veterans-owned companies at 24%. Although I would have guessed HUD would have the highest percentage of HUBZONE contracts but it is actually Department of Interior.

While it is important that all agencies meet their set-aside goals, there really are a few big agencies that affect the biggest spend. For example, DOD spend is $200 billion a year while the rest of agencies is less than $100 billion a year.