Acquisition Professionals Favor Changes in Small Business Preferences A large majority of government acquisition executives believe small business preference programs should be overhauled, according to a survey by the Professional Services Council and the accounting firm Grant Thornton. The most frequent complaint was, “No one knows the priority of the different target groups.” The Professional Services Council’s president, Stan Soloway, said his member contractors agree that there are too many set-aside programs. “It’s like merit badges: how many [set-aside qualifications] do you have?” he said at a Nov. 1 briefing on the survey. Soloway said his small business members’ second worry was, “What happens when I graduate?” He said mid-sized companies are increasingly being squeezed out of federal procurement. “What is the purpose of the (federal) small business program – is it to create small businesses or is to create business that can grow?” he asked. The PSC and Grant Thornton interviewed 38 mostly mid- and high-level acquisition executives. The report, titled “Troubling Trends in Federal Procurement,” says those professionals feel threatened by the “gotcha mentality” of auditors and congressional overseers. “It is as tough an environment as they’ve ever seen,” Soloway said. Three out of four respondents said small business preferences need to be revised. “Respondents said that misuse of these programs is frequent,” the report says. “Examples given include large businesses that give their small business subcontractors little or no work and small business prime contractors that simply pass work on to large business subcontractors.” They recommended that the way the government measures the success of socioeconomic programs should be changed to something better than simply counting the number of contracts and dollars going to the target groups. Some respondents said new initiatives such as strategic sourcing make it more difficult to provide opportunities for small contractors.