Report: Billions in federal small-business contracts go to large firms

Here are just a few of the companies that were considered a small business in the past year: Apple, Chevron, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney. At least, that’s what one advocacy group found when it perused the Federal Procurement Data Systems for government contracts for the past year.

Each year, the government attempts to award at least 23 percent of all federal contracts to small businesses. But new research from the American Small Business League (ASBL) shows that 72 large companies received $16.4 billion in federal small-business contracts, which the group attributes to a combination of policy loopholes, human error and mis-categorization.

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“It’s really hard for a small company to compete with a company that has 5,000 employees,” said Brian Reeder, communications director for the ASBL. “When bigger companies are actually receiving the contracts, there’s nothing left for small businesses.”

The Small Business Administration cautions that it has not yet released its official data on contracting for 2011 and therefore can’t speak to the accuracy of ASBL’s findings. SBA will publish its official 2011 Small Business Procurement Scorecard this summer

“Each federal agency is responsible for ensuring the quality of its own contracting data, but SBA conducts an additional analysis to help agencies identify any potential data anomalies,” said John Shoraka, the SBA’s Associate Administrator for Government Contracting and Business Development in an e-mail statement. “As part of its ongoing data quality efforts, SBA is continuing to work with federal agency procurement staff to provide tools to facilitate review of data, implement improvements to procurement systems and conduct training to improve accuracy.”

Holes in the system

The ASBL report, released Thursday morning, found that of the top 100 companies receiving federal small business contracts, 72 were large companies that exceeded the SBA’s small-business size standards, which vary depending on the sector.

It’s difficult to identify just one reason why the contracts are awarded as they are, but experts say there are countless small leakages in the government procurement process that can cause large businesses, either purposefully or indirectly, to occasionally win out over small ones.

Ray Bjorklund, chief knowledge officer with the government-contractor software company Deltek, said it can be hard for the SBA to pick the “right” size for a company to be considered a small business under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes, the government’s business classification system.

“When SBA is looking at one class of establishment, such as a corn farmer, there are a lot of small-business corn growers, but also large corporate growers,” Bjorklund said. “It’s not an easy thing to maintain size standards in a way that keeps up with growth in the economy and changing relationships between sectors.”

Beyond that, when agencies begin feeling the pressure to meet their 23 percent goal, Bjorklund said they sometimes choose NAICS codes that have larger-sized caps if they want a large company to fit into a small-business contract.