Open Dialogue on Improving How to Do Business with the Federal Government Ideas

Standards need to be established to for how buyers are completing their due diligence as it relates to verification of classifications. If the government worked to align its practices between systems, regulated/verified information submitted, and created a more holistic structure of classifications, the government would see better practices, overall increased compliance, and enhanced utilization of small businesses. ...more »

The government should identify as many opportunities to use platforms for open market competition as possible in order to increase participation in federal business from a more diverse community of suppliers. Many organizations are too entrenched in their relationships with huge corporations and the use of BPAs that many small- and minority-owned businesses are denied access to these opportunities where they may be able ...more »

Small business utilization guidelines should be simplified in an effort to increase compliance. For instance, when the Department of Veterans Affairs instituted a small business mandate in FY12, manufacturers were forced to change their distribution and sales strategy. This funneled sales to smaller businesses—many of them veteran-owned—and also increased the competitive environment for these contracts. Interestingly, ...more »

Government has been doing great things on setting up policies like "Cloud First". Same must be considered for "Small Business First" for each and every procurement and have those evaluation/findings report publish to small business so, businesses can improve on how decisions were made. This provides opportunity for small business to improve and extend services as expected.

The current structure for agency reporting relevant to small business utilization goals is flawed, in that it allows agencies to grossly misinterpret the intent of the these goals. Agencies are required to report dollar volumes at this time. This is an accurate representation of whether or not the dollars are going to small businesses, but it is not an accurate representation of how many small businesses are receiving ...more »

SBA mandates that small subcontractors be paid quickly by primes when the government pays quickly. This would extend the same requirement to small businesses that are team members on Contractor Teaming Agreements under the GSA MAS program.

Mid-tier businesses have valuable government contracting experience and power the economy by subcontracting with small business concerns. Prohibiting these dollars from counting towards an agency’s socioeconomic goals artificially reduces the apparent government investment in such companies. As a result, SBA goals are treated with heightened importance, creating greater exclusion of sources in open competition and increasing ...more »

I noticed there are not a lot of different opportunities available for WOSBs across various NAICS codes. I receive alerts from FBO for my NAICS codes. However, I haven't received many that are set aside for WOSBs. There needs to be more opportunities across different NAICS codes. I know there are many NAICS codes that are eligible for WOSB set aside, but I haven't seen many contracts advertised that fall under many of ...more »

The FAR should reflect best practices in the private sector and many state construction (15 or so) programs by requiring prime contractors to list/name primary subcontractors in low-price award procedures (like proposed in HR 1942). Since the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act, federal agencies have run away from construction project low-bid prime contract award procedures because of the claims and disputes that were ...more »

Question 1: How can we make doing business with the government easier and less costly for small businesses, minority businesses, new entrants, and non-traditional government contractors? Answer 1: So far I have not encountered any costs with trying to start a business, because I am doing extension research first. I do see there are a lot of costs to get started. Question 2: If you are a small business, minority ...more »

One possible solution to reduce the complexity associated with commercial item acquisition would be to address the burden of providing Commercial Sales Practices ("CSP") information in response to large contract solicitations (e.g. FSS, VA National Contract, DHA E-CAT). While we acknowledge that CSPs may be helpful to enable the determination of fair and reasonable pricing, the nature and type of data requested varies ...more »

Growing small businesses and diversifying the pool of federal contractors are important goals. However, recently, there have been several highly publicized examples of small business contractors who shortchanged workers on federal jobs. While small businesses may not be able to meet all the experiential criteria that are part of the responsibility determination, there needs to be a mechanism in place to ensure that ...more »