Native American contractors urging more Buy Indian usage

      Despite some progress in implementing Buy Indian Act preferences in federal contracting in recent years, things could be moving much faster.

      The Native American Contractors Association (NACA), in its recent annual outreach meeting with congressional lawmakers, stressed that the government should be applying Buy Indian set-asides more broadly, especially in agencies such as the Indian Health Service, which specifically services tribes.

      “NACA continues to ‘beat the drum’ about the underutilization of Buy Indian,” the organization said in a recent white paper.

      The Buy Indian Act was made law in 1910, but the Interior Dept.’s Bureau of Indian Affairs did not implement regulations until 2013.

      The regulations require that agencies must set aside procurements for Indian-owned small businesses to the maximum extent possible.

      From fiscal 2014 to 2017, the Interior Dept. awarded 9% of its procurements under Buy Indian, Michael “Keawe” Anderson, NACA executive director, told Set-Aside Alert.

      However, while the Buy Indian law also applied to the Health and Human Services Dept.’s Indian Health Services, the IHS has not yet issued regulations to implement it. Only 0.9% of contracts at IHS were Buy Indian from fiscal 2014 to 2017, Anderson says.

      NACA’s goal is to urge standardization and greater utilization of Buy Indian set-asides across multiple agencies, including IHS; the bureaus of Land Management, Ocean Energy Management, Reclamation, Safety and Environmental Enforcement; National Park Service; U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

      Other legislative goals that NACA is pursuing on behalf of native-owned contractors include:

• Passing S1116 and HR4506, which aim to standardize the Buy Indian policies between DOI and Indian Health Services;
• Avoiding proposed cuts to the Small Business Administration proposed by President Trump for fiscal 2019. More funding is needed to address staffing shortages that are affecting processing of applications for the 8(a) Business Development program and the HUBZone program;
• Urging solutions to reduce the security clearance backlog of 700,000 applications.

More information: NACA white paper: http://goo.gl/V7nXnQ

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