NASA Online Guide Highlights IT Opportunities NASA has released a new edition of its “Information Technology Guide for Small Businesses,” a road map to the space agency’s IT contracting opportunities. The guide includes names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for contracting officers and small business specialists at NASA headquarters and its field centers. The publication also summarizes each center’s work and its IT contracts, including the name and contact information for the incumbent. The guide is available at www.osdbu.nasa.gov (click on “Publications”). “Technology, especially IT, has just catapulted small businesses from construction and maintenance into the mainstream of government and commerce,” said Ralph Thomas, NASA assistant administrator for small and disadvantaged business utilization. Fifteen years ago, he said, there were not enough qualified small firms in the federal marketplace. “That’s not the case any more,” he added. “The problem now is that there are just so many firms today.” He spoke at Set-Aside Alert’s Monthly Small Business Breakfast in Falls Church, VA, April 8. When a company markets an agency for the first time, Thomas emphasizes the importance of research on what the agency is doing and who is doing it: “See whether companies that are successful in that agency look like you, then see if those on the outside looking in look like you.” Before meeting with the agency’s OSDBU or buyers, he said, be ready to say “in 25 words or less” why you are the right company and how you are different from your competitors. “If you lose, get a debriefing, so you can do better next time,” he advised. “The most persistent always wins,” Thomas concluded.