White House Task Force on Small Business Contracting Move Right Along, Folks—Nothing to See Here A presidential task force has issued 13 recommendations for expanding contract opportunities for small businesses, but most of the ideas have been bandied about for years. President Obama created the Interagency Task Force on Federal Contracting Opportunities for Small Businesses in April and ordered it to look for ways to expand the small business share of the federal market. It was co-chaired by SBA, the Office of Management and Budget and the Commerce Department, with more than a dozen other agencies participating. The recommendations include a litany of familiar ideas such as combating unjustified contract bundling, improving subcontracting opportunities and providing additional training for the acquisition workforce. (See the recommendations on p. 4.) To expand small business access to task and delivery order contracts, which are consuming a growing share of contract dollars, the task force recommended a review of policies on reserving individual orders for small firms. But the group did not propose legislation to require set-asides on GSA schedule orders. While calling for agency leaders to be held accountable for achieving small business procurement goals, the task force report offers no new suggestions for enforcing such accountability. The government has failed to reach the 23% small business goal in each of the past four years. It has consistently fallen short of goals for woman-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned and HUBZone businesses, while surpassing the 5% goal for small disadvantaged businesses. “Our message today is clear,” SBA administrator Karen Mills wrote in a post on the White House blog. “We’re going to build on what works in small business contracting.  We’re going to implement new tools to help more small businesses compete and win.  And as a result, we’re going to help them do what they do best: create jobs and move our economy forward. The recommendations change nothing; they call for new committees and further review. The task force said it will report to the president by Dec. 30 on progress in implementing the recommendations. Mills wrote, “Now comes the real work.  Implementing these new tools and recommendations won’t be easy.” The task force report is available at www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/contracting_task_force_report.pdf.