Government Computer News
How big companies get on SBA’s list
Acquisitions, certification process clouds picture of small-business contracts
The Small Business Administration, claiming a major victory for its constituents, recently announced that small companies won $79.6 billion in federal prime contracts in fiscal 2005.
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Former SBA administrator Hector Barreto, in one of his last official acts before stepping down April 25, praised the agency’s year-end contract data and said that small businesses won 25.4 percent of the $314 billion total federal prime contracts awarded in fiscal 2005.
Meeting goals
The federal government has a congressionally mandated goal of awarding 23 percent of federal prime contracts to small companies, and Barreto said that 2005 marked the third straight year it had met that goal.
But Barreto’s assertions have come under sharp attack from congressional leaders, as well as SBA’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office.
Critics there have complained repeatedly of problems in how the data is compiled and how the agency oversees federal small-business contracting. One complaint is that companies self-certify as small businesses in a government database that rarely is reviewed for accuracy.
Another is that large government contractors are winning small-business prime contracts.
Research company Eagle Eye Publishers Inc. of Fairfax, Va., in June released its own fiscal 2005 small-business contracting report using data produced by the General Services Administration and the Defense Department. Eagle Eye’s report identified $377 billion in federal prime contracts, $63 billion more than SBA’s report. Of that higher total, Eagle Eye found that small businesses won $65 billion in prime contracts, just 17 percent of the total, said company president and CEO Paul Murphy.
“Administrator Barreto is either comparing apples to oranges or else he has access to numbers that the general public does not,” Murphy said. “They’re manipulating the appearance of success.”
But neither SBA nor GSA generates the report, said Karen Hontz, SBA associate administrator for government contracting. That job was outsourced in 2003 to Global Computer Enterprises Inc. of Reston, Va. GSA hired Global Computer to run the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, the database that tracks government contracting including small-business contracts.
Hontz said she was comfortable with the accuracy of the data SBA was touting. SBA officials declined to comment on Eagle Eye’s report.
When Eagle Eye compiled a list of the top 100 companies that won small-business contracts—for both IT and non-IT work—in fiscal 2005, it found several familiar large-company names. Among the IT contractors on its list was Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, which ranked third, with more than $360 million in small-business contracts.
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