Panel supports recommendations to fine-tune small business contracting policies

A federal acquisition panel has given its initial stamp of approval to recommendations designed to improve small businesses' access to government contracting opportunities.

The Services Acquisition Reform Act Advisory Committee, a panel created by the 2004 Defense Authorization Act, has preliminarily signed off on suggestions from its small business working group. The recommendations are aimed at addressing issues arising from large contracts awarded to multiple vendors, confusion over a proliferation of small business preference programs, inadequate training and so-called cascading procurements.

In a first-round voting process, the full acquisition reform panel approved five of the working group's recommendations, adopted two more in principle while requesting modified language, and tabled two for future discussion. The working group withdrew one recommendation to revise it.

"The working group and the panel have devoted great effort to craft a package of recommendations that will improve the procurement process for small businesses," panel chair Marcia Madsen said. "The panel focused on areas that we believed would make a real difference in federal procurement for these companies."

Approved recommendations included measures to clarify small business contracting preferences and guide contracting officers in how to prioritize among them, as well as to enhance training on small business contracting and subcontracting governmentwide.

Panelists also adopted a measure to create an interagency group that would look at ways to unbundle large contracts and mitigate the negative effects that these umbrella solicitations have on small, specialized firms.

The panel further recommended that regulations preclude the use of a contract structure known as a cascading procurement, in which bids are solicited from all types of companies and then evaluated by a contracting officer in descending order of preference under various priority schemes, such as those for disabled veteran- or minority-owned businesses, until an acceptable proposal is identified.

The structure has been criticized for letting bidders go to significant expense to develop proposals that may never be evaluated.

The advisory panel chose to postpone for further discussion two recommendations regarding the General Services Administration's latest incarnation of its contracts database, known as the Federal Procurement Data System -- Next Generation. The FPDS-NG has been widely criticized for poor data quality, and panel members agreed to address the small business-related suggestions in a later discussion of that system, according to Laura Auletta, the panel's designated federal officer.

The voting that took place in January was a preliminary step in the panel's formal adoption of recommendations for the White House's Office of Federal Procurement Policy and Congress. Panel members expect to finish deliberations in July on various other procurement issues, including performance-based contracting and commercial acquisitions, and at that time will vote on the entire set of recommendations.

The panel's deliberations come at a time when small business groups have been crying foul over proposals in the President Bush's fiscal 2007 budget to increase small business loan fees and cut funding for Small Business Administration programs, including several for microloans, small business development counseling and technology development.

"While President Bush brags about government costs going down for the Small Business Administration, he fails to tell the truth that slashing federal resources over the years raises costs for small business owners," said John Kerry, ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.