Acquisition Panel Considers Small Business Issues The Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s Acquisition Advisory Panel will not consider whether small businesses should recertify their eligibility more often, said panel member Melanie Sabelhaus, deputy administrator of SBA. Sabelhaus heads the panel’s working group on small business issues. At the panel’s March 30 meeting in Washington, she said the working group will not address sole-source awards to Alaska Native Corporations. The House Government Reform Committee announced last month that it will investigate whether the ANC awards are being improperly used to bypass competitive bidding. (SAA, 3/18) SBA has been trying for more than a year to come up with a final rule on recertification. The agency’s inspector general said the final version would require firms to recertify their small-business eligibility annually on multi-year, multiple award contracts such as GSA schedules, but no final rule has been published. GSA currently requires schedule contractors to recertify when their options are exercised, usually every five years. The IG said the final rule would not require companies to recertify when annual options are exercised on set-aside contracts. The IG and some critics want annual recertification on all contracts so that businesses will not be counted as small after they have outgrown size standards. Sabelhaus listed several issues that the advisory panel will address: *Task orders and delivery orders under GSA schedules and other multiple award contracts, where small businesses often have to compete against large ones. *Cascading or tiered procurements. She said the panel will explore whether these techniques are being used to avoid setting aside contracts. *Other Transaction Authority. Most often used in research and development contracts, OTAs bypass some of the normal procurement rules. The Army issued a multibillion-dollar OTA award to Boeing Co. for its Future Combat System, but recently decided to convert it to a standard contract. Sabelhaus said the working group will look at whether small firms are being considered for these R&D contracts, which require less stringent accounting rules than normal procurements. She said the group will also explore a number of subcontracting issues, including bait-and-switch tactics and prompt payment by primes. “We will not only explore penalties, but we want to look at potential incentives to large primes to reach their (subcontracting) goals,” she said. The Acquisition Advisory Panel was chartered by Congress to conduct a wide-ranging review of procurement laws and regulations. Its report is due in January. The panel’s next meeting is scheduled April 19 in Washington. For details, go to www.acqnet.gov/aap/.