Set-Aside Alert exclusive analysis:

No. of Cat Mgt small biz vendors has shrunk by 18% since 2018

Wide range of small biz utilization by fed’l agencies

      The number of small business vendors participating in the government’s Category Management procurement initiatives fell by 18% from fiscal 2018 to 2021.

      Meanwhile, the value of small business category management procurements has risen by 22% during that period.

      Set-Aside Alert analyzed October 2022 data from the General Services Administration’s Category Management Dashboard established in 2018. The most recent year of complete data is fiscal 2021.

      From fiscal 2018 to 2021, the number of small business vendors participating in category management decreased by 18%, from 81,704 down to 67,314.

      The reduction in vendor numbers has occurred despite overall growth in the dollar value of the small business category management awards. Such awards grew from $97 million in fiscal 2018 to $118 million in fiscal 2021.

      Overall, the small business awards portion of category management decreased to 29.5% in fiscal 2021, down from 30.6% in fiscal 2018.

Best and worst federal agencies

      Some federal agencies are doing much better than others at utilizing small business in their category management procurement.

      In 2021, with an average utilization of 29.5%, some agencies did more than twice as well as the average. Others did less than a third of the average.

      Here are the top-performing agencies for small business utilization in category management from 2018 to 2021.

      Here are the worst performing agencies for small business utilization in category management.

      There were upward trends in several agencies’ utilization of small businesses from 2018 to 2021:

• Office of Personnel Management’s utilization jumped from 36% to 64%;
• GSA’s increased from 39% to 46%;
• National Science Foundation’s rose from 13% to 25%; and
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s expanded from 41% to 55%.

      However, there also were strong downward trends during the period:

• HUD’s dropped from 39% to -6%; and
• Education Dept.’s reduced from 33% to 16%.

Trump Admin. vs. Biden Admin.

      Considering that small business contracting has become politicized in recent years, Set-Aside Alert separately assessed the Trump Administration’s performance from 2018 to 2020 and the Biden Administration’s performance from 2020 to 2021 regarding small business share of category management.

      Under Trump, small business procurements in category management dropped from 30.6% to 29.5%, from 2018-2020. The number of small business category management vendors fell from 81,704 in 2018 to 71,656 in 2020, a 12% reduction.

      Biden’s team was in charge of federal agencies for only about half of fiscal 2021 due to the presidential transition. Also, fiscal 2022 is not complete so it is not included in the analysis.

      Under Biden, from 2020 to 2021, small business procurement remained at 29.5% both years. The number of small business vendors went down from 71,656 to 67,314, a reduction of 6%.

More information:
GSA dashboard: https://d2d.gsa.gov/report/small-business-dashboard

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