The General Accounting Office recommended that the Army void an award to a company that misrepresented the names of key employees.

The Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity issued a purchase order for installation and training services to Metrica Inc. of San Antonio. A competitor, ACS Government Services Inc., protested, saying Metrica had falsely claimed it had hired three key employees from ACS.

GAO faulted the Army contracting officer for failing to notice that the same three names appeared on both companies’ lists of key employees.

In upholding the protest, GAO recommended that Army award the task order to ACS and that Metrica pay ACS’s legal expenses.

The case is file number B-293014.001, announced Jan. 20.

The National Venture Capital Association reports U.S. venture capital investment fell 15% in 2003 from the previous year. On the bright side, VC investment showed signs of bouncing back in the fourth quarter. Total VC investment for 2003 reached $18.2 billion invested in 2,715 companies.

Venture investment remains technology intensive. Life sciences investments, including both biotechnology and medical devices, accounted for 27% of total investment. Software firms captured 20% of the total, the association said.

SBA will commemorate National Small Business Week with Expo ‘04 in Orlando, FL, May 19-21.

The celebration includes the announcement of the National Small Business Person of the Year. Events this year will include a small business expo, a business matchmaking event, business seminars, a town hall meeting, and award ceremonies honoring women entrepreneurs and state and national small business winners. For more information, go to www.sba.gov/50.

SBA has awarded the first contracts in an economic development initiative aimed at Native American communities.

Administrator Hector Barreto said the initiative “will create a framework for us to work closely with tribal communities, helping Native American businesses succeed and create jobs in their communities.”

The new contracts awarded incorporate partnerships with American Indian tribal governments, tribal colleges, Native American organizations, federal agencies and the private sector to spur economic growth for Native Americans. They include:

*Arviso Business Consulting, a Navajo tribal member-owned firm in New Mexico, to develop two cultural tourism corridors for rural micro-enterprise development in the Navajo Nation.

*Kauffman & Associates, a small American Indian-owned company in Spokane, WA, to provide technical assistance, marketing assistance, communications training and Web site development to small businesses in economically disadvantaged Native American areas.

*Mandaree Enterprise Corp., a tribally-owned company on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, ND, to develop a business and technology incubator that will provide infrastructure support and access for Native American entrepreneurs.

*G&G Advertising, an 8(a) American Indian-owned company in Albuquerque, NM, and Billings, MT, to develop and provide marketingproducts to Native American and Alaska Native small business owners.

*Nth-Degree Analytics, a small business in Bozeman, MT, to conduct research on job creation tracking in Indian Country.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology plans a workshop Feb. 17 on new ways to control spam e-mail. Among other things, the institute hopes to identify new areas of research that it might support.

For more information, go to http://csrc.nist.gov/spam/ or contact Teresa Vicente at 301-975-3883 or teresa.vicente@nist.gov.