“President Biden announced in June he seeks to double the share of contracts that go to small, disadvantaged businesses by fiscal 2025 as part of his administration’s goal to narrow the racial wealth gap. Also on November 18, the administration released an outline of its president’s management agenda that prioritizes creating more opportunities for underserved entrepreneurs and all businesses in the federal marketplace. The new actions build on these initiatives…”
“First off, in order to further the goals outlined in June, the president is asking agencies ‘to increase their goals, so that governmentwide spending results in 11% of contracting dollars being awarded to small, disadvantaged businesses, up from the current statutory goal of 5%,’ said the White House. There are various governmentwide and individual agency goals for awarding contracts to small businesses overall and specific types of small businesses. The fact sheet does not have specific details on how to go about the increase.
Over the next year, the federal government will also revise the goals for the other groups of small business, which include women-owned small businesses; service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses; and Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HubZones) businesses…”
“The Office of Management and Budget is issuing updated guidance on the use of category management, an initiative to get agencies to buy as an organized entity as opposed to individually in order to ‘conduct more equitable buying practices,’ said the White House.
OMB is also directing agencies to include progress towards meeting small business goals in the evaluation criteria for performance plans for Senior Executive Service managers who oversee contracting. These plans are ‘the written summary of work that the individual senior executive is expected to accomplish during the appraisal period and the requirements against which performance will be evaluated,’ as described by one agency. ‘The plan addresses all critical elements and any other performance elements established for the senior executive.’…” Read the full article here.
Source: Biden Administration Announces More Actions to Help Small Businesses Win Contracts – By Courtney Bublé, December 2, 2021. Government Executive.
