Bouquets For Homeland Security OSDBU The Homeland Security Department’s small business program is an “early success,” investigators from the Government Accountability Office reported. Two years after the department was created by the merger of nearly two dozen agencies, DHS said it awarded 35% of its prime contract dollars to small firms in fiscal 2004, far above its goal of 23%. The GAO report cited extensive outreach efforts by the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, including creation of a mentor-protégé program and a website where procurement forecasts are posted. It said the OSDBU director, Kevin Boshears, “works closely with the Chief Procurement Officer to emphasize throughout the department the important policy objective of small business inclusion in acquisition activities.” Boshears and his staff “have also been directly involved in DHS’s strategic sourcing efforts to help ensure that, even as the department leverages its buying power, small businesses continue to have opportunities to compete for contracts,” the report added. DHS has established a strategic sourcing program to coordinate purchases of many commodities, including office supplies, weapons, uniforms and boats. But GAO said the department is still struggling to put together a uniform acquisition organization. Seven of its component agencies brought contracting shops with them, and those continue to operate much as they did before the merger, the investigators found. An eighth contracting office serves the rest of the department. DHS has issued a management directive ordering its chief procurement officer and bureau heads to collaborate on acquisitions, but the Coast Guard and Secret Service are exempt from that directive. Congress mandated that those two agencies remain separate organizations with the department, but GAO said there is no legal reason to exempt them from centralized procurement. The Coast Guard accounted for more than 20% of the department’s procurement last year. The report is GAO 05-179, available at www.gao.gov.