Community Member

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 »

Agencies should have more flexibility and discretion in defining and using size standards by NAICS code and ownership category to solve the ‘mid-tier trap’ that limits participation and reduces the value created by the small business program. Some departments have recently recognized the value and challenges of mid-tier businesses, many of which are successful graduates of the small business program. When successful ...more »

A significant challenge in procuring cloud-enabled IT services involves structuring an appropriate method of payment. For something simple, like Infrastructure as a Service, agencies should be able to contract directly with a cloud service provider without having to fund upfront (in effect, pre-paying) for a projected level of service consumption. These types of procurement arrangements are typically fixed price. This ...more »