Set-Aside Alert news analysis:

Top 20 Small Business Federal Contracting Stories of 2022

      It felt like a longer year than usual with important world and domestic news happening around the clock. And small business federal contractors had their share of significant developments. While federal spending data for fiscal 2022 is not fully reported yet, there were a number of major stories affecting this federal market.

      Here’s Set-Aside Alert’s exclusive list of the Top 20 Small Business Federal Contracting Stories of 2022.

• #1 $1.2 Trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: President Joe Biden achieved a strong legislative win by shepherding a substantial boost in infrastructure spending through Congress. To help small business contractors benefit from the new funding, the Transportation Dept. recently proposed a new rule to make it easier for Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs) to win contracts for work on highways, airports, and transit systems. Read the proposed rule at: https://bit.ly/3u15Gs.
• #2 Small Disadvantaged Businesses: President Biden raised the government’s Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) procurement goal to 12% for 2023, on track to reach 15% by 2025. The White House also incorporated equity goals into recent legislation and required federal agencies to develop Equity Action Plans. Read more at: http://bit.ly/3TBn8nn.
• #3 Small Business Procurement Scorecard: The federal government exceeded its small business procurement goal for the ninth year in a row in fiscal 2021, the Small Business Administration reported in July.

        Small business prime awards reached 27.23% of eligible contracts, well over the 23% goal. Total small business procurement reached $154.2 billion, up from $145.7 billion the year before. See the scorecard at: https://bit.ly/3zaHAmX.

• #4 Major Small Business Contracts in Development: The General Services Administration released solicitations for several Polaris small business pools for IT services and solutions. A protest has been filed alleging that the solicitation violated regulations. In November, GSA posted a draft solicitation for the OASIS+ Small Business professional services contract. Both are expected to be multi-billion-dollar acquisitions. Meanwhile the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP4 IT services contract and its small business tracks was stalled by protests; however, the GAO recently dismissed the protests (see: story on page 1).
• #5 Significant proposed rule for 8(a)s, size standards, and more: The Small Business Administration in September proposed a rule with more than 50 updates to small business federal contracting regulations. Many of the updates concerned the SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program, including terms of ownership and control, eligibility and business plans. There also were provisions for size protests, size certifications, non-manufacturer rule, ostensible subcontractors and joint ventures. Read the proposed rule at: https://bit.ly/3UrCJYr.
• #6 Veteran-owned certifications: The Veterans Affairs Dept. announced that it would stop accepting applications for veteran verifications on Oct. 24. The change was made as the SBA prepared to assume responsibility for all veteran-owned small business certifications, including those for service-disabled veterans, on Jan. 1, 2023. Self-certified veteran owners who apply to the SBA for certification will have a year-long grace period to complete the application. Read the SBA’s guidance at: https://bit.ly/3hrfm1X and the VA’s guidance at: https://bit.ly/3CtCEMP.
• #7 Addressing Climate Change: The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress included several ambitious provisions to address climate change, including funding and tax credit for clean energy technology and infrastructure.

        In a related action, the Biden administration published a proposed rule requiring federal contractors to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. Covered contractors with contracts of $7.5 million or more in the previous year need to disclose, while those with $50 million or more need to disclose and also establish science-based targets. Read the proposed rule at: https://bit.ly/3hzgMaE.

• #8 Equity Action Plans: The White House ordered 90 federal agencies to develop equity action plans for “advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities. A number of the programs seek to increase federal contracts and other support for small disadvantaged firms. For example, SBA said it has devoted nearly 30% of its Small Business Development Center funding to minority-focused institutions and has placed three Women’s Business Centers on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Read the plans at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/equity/.
• #9 SBA’s Fraud Challenge: Confronting and resolving up to $100 billion in suspected fraud from COVID-related small business loans continues to be the SBA’s top ongoing challenge, according to the SBA’s Inspector General in a report in October. In 2021, the IG identified $85 billion in suspected fraud in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and $4.5 billion in the Paycheck Protection Program. In the latest report, the total fraud estimate from those programs was raised to $100 billion. Read the report at: https://bit.ly/3TUiBx9.
• #10 National Defense Bill: At press time, House and Senate negotiators were working on a final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal 2023, including a number of small business provisions. The Senate draft included a provision to make permanent the Defense Dept.’s Mentor-Protege Program and to increase the participation of SDBs, along with adding funding for Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTACs). The House version included a provision allowing 8(a) firms to extend their participation for an additional year, among other items. Read more in: story on page 1.
• #11 SAM Delays: Thousands of contractors reported delays starting in July in receiving their assigned Unique Entity Identifer number from GSA’s System for Award Management (SAM). GSA began offering the unique identifer in February to replace the longstanding DUNS proprietary numbering system for identifying commercial entities. GSA extended deadlines for some vendors. Also, the Defense Dept. issued a class deviation--valid until Oct. 31--stating that contracting officers are allowed to move forward even if the firm has no identifer, as long as the firm can prove it initiated an effort to obtain the identifier. Read DOD’s class deviation memo at: https://bit.ly/3DuDjyq.
• #12 Women-Owned Delays: The first year of SBA’s certification of Women-Owned Small Businesses (WOSBs) got off to a shaky start. The SBA reported that 48% of WOSB Program applications in fiscal 2021 took longer to process than the statutory limit of 90 days, according to the SBA’s Congressional Budget Justification and Performance Report. Read the report at: https://bit.ly/3P0UoDd.
• #13 Small Business Earmarks: After Congress recently lifted its prohibition on earmarks, lawmakers awarded $83 million in grants directly to dozens of small business organizations around the country tucked into the SBA’s budget in the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal 2022. Such grants--in which the recipients are specified in the legislation--generally are referred to as earmarks and have been criticized as pork barrel spending. See the list of grants in the Set-Aside Alert edition ofApril 1, 2022.
• #14 Employee-based Size Standard: The SBA issued a final rule effective in July stating that it is calculating a business’ average number of employees based on two years of records, not one year as in the past. Read the final rule at: https://bit.ly/3OaGcXJ.
• #15 Vaccine Mandate - An appeals court ruled in October that President Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors is allowed to go into effect for most states. Shortly after the ruling, White House officials announced they are continuing to hold off on enforcing the vaccine requirement. The vaccine rule was imposed by executive order in September 2021. A District Court in Georgia issued a nationwide hold. The appeals court upheld the hold for the 7 states in the lawsuit--AL, GA, ID, KS, SC, UT and WV.
• #16 Transactional Data Reporting (TDR): The GSA’s Inspector General in an October report called for cancelation of the TDR pricing initiative, which allows vendors to report data from orders placed against certain federal contracts, including Multiple-Award Schedules contracts, as an alternative to disclosing Commercial Sales Practices data and complying with the Price Reduction Clause. However, industry has been supportive of TDR, with the Coalition for Government Procurement saying it has benefits for small businesses. Read the IG report at: http://bit.ly/3C4oP67 and the CGP blog at: https://bit.ly/3UGc4FZ.
• #17 Small Business Size Standards: The SBA updates size standards for small businesses every five years. In 2022, it published several proposed and final rules revising standards in multiple industries, resulting in tens of thousands of additional businesses to be eligible for “small” status. An updated Table of Size Standards was released on Oct. 1 and can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/3PfqaNE.
• #18 Objections to Labor Rules: The Professional Services Council objected to the Labor Dept.’s proposed rule requiring that incumbent service contract employees be granted rights to remain in their jobs under certain conditions when the contract changes hands. The PSC also raised concerns about provisions in the House NDAA bill for fiscal 2023: Section 809, which sets a preference for vendors with labor agreements, and Section 2809B, which applies the preference to military construction.
• #19 Union Access - A new GSA rule that became effective on Sept. 2 allows unions to provide information to federal contractor employees at GSA-controlled facilities. Employers cannot lawfully prevent union-related conversations in non-working areas during non-working time. See PilieroMazza PLLC’s compliance guidelines at: https://bit.ly/3UnleYZ.
• #20 Independent Contractors - The Labor Dept. announced it would rescind the Trump Administration’s rule regarding independent contractors, which was viewed as favoring companies that use gig workers, such as Uber and Lyft. Read the DOL release at: https://bit.ly/sVCo2SU.

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