SBA releases Procurement Scorecard

The Small Business Administration released its Small Business Procurement Scorecard for fiscal 2015, the final scorecard under the Obama administration, with changes in format coming next year.

Few surprises

The fiscal 2015 scorecard had few surprises, since the major milestones had been announced previously: the government met its 23% goal for the third year in a row, and reached its 5% goal for women-owned small firms for the first time. Also, goals for small disadvantaged firms and for service-disabled veteran-owned small firms were attained.

A notable development was that the Energy Department dramatically improved its rating to an “A,” previously an “F” for at least the last four years in a row.

The department nearly doubled its small business procurement in fiscal 2015, jumping to $2.1 billion, from $1.2 billion in fiscal 2014. The percentage of small business contracting rose to 9% in fiscal 2015, from 5% the year before.

Asked about DOE’s jump in grade in fiscal 2015, SBA spokeswoman Carol Chastang said it was due to the agency’s ability to count Management and Operation first tier subcontract awards toward their prime contracting goals, in accordance with 15 USC 644(g)(3).

“DOE was able to count these subcontract awards towards their prime contracting goals to the extent DOE collected data on the subcontractors and made it publicly available. These DOE subcontract awards were not counted toward the overall government scorecard,” Chastang told Set-Aside Alert.

Of the 24 major agencies scored for their small business procurement, 21 got an “A” or “A+” and Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and NASA got a “B.”

NASA’s “B” was an improvement over its “C” last year. The VA and HHS got “B” grades both years.

Changes on the way

However, significant changes are anticipated for the scorecard next year, including the SBA’s move to include overseas contracts in the pool of eligible contracts. That shift is expected to depress small business procurement percentages for fiscal 2016 and beyond.

Additional changes have been mandated by Congress, including more data on subcontracting and on the number of small vendors.

Methodology under question

Lloyd Chapman, a longtime SBA critic and head of the American Small Business League, said the group filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California to stop SBA from “continuing to misrepresent” attainment of the small business goals. SBA officials have said they use the same methods to compute goal attainment as did the previous administration.

More Information: SBA Scorecards by agency: https://goo.gl/FqUAul and
ASBL complaint: http://goo.gl/tXd8Pz

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