Agencies to get more nuanced marks on small business contracting

When the Small Business Administration releases the fiscal 2009 report on agencies' progress meeting small business contracting goals, the familiar red, yellow and green stoplight-style ratings will be noticeably absent, replaced with an A-to-F letter grading system.

SBA announced the change and released a sample score card on Friday, saying the new format better reflects the needs of individual agencies while increasing clarity and transparency.

"Federal contracts provide critical opportunities for small businesses to grow and create jobs," SBA Administrator Karen Mills said. "This revision builds on our ongoing efforts to strengthen the integrity of the overall process for small business contracting, while also expanding opportunities for small businesses to compete for and win federal contracts."

Mills said SBA worked closely with contracting and small business officials across government during the past year to develop the new format. The score card will base agencies' overall grades on three quantitative measures: prime contracts (worth 80 percent of the grade), subcontracts (worth 10 percent) and progress plans for meeting goals (also worth 10 percent).

SBA reports annually on agencies' progress meeting congressionally mandated small business goals. The governmentwide target for prime contracts to small businesses is 23 percent of total qualified contract dollars, with additional goals of 5 percent for small disadvantaged businesses, 5 percent for women-owned businesses, 3 percent for HUBZone small businesses and 3 percent for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.

SBA negotiates individual objectives for each agency, while ensuring that when combined they meet the overall statutory goals for the federal government. SBA's small business procurement goal, for example, is more than 67 percent.

In 2009 SBA presented the ratings for fiscal 2008, showing that small businesses won 21.5 percent of contract dollars, or about $93.3 billion out of a small business-eligible base of about $434 billion. While that fell short of the governmentwide goal, more than half of agencies met their individual goals. The small business eligible base for fiscal 2009 was about $437 billion.