The military services are not giving small businesses a fair shake when it comes to awarding contracts.

The Defense Department Inspector General Office unearthed some disturbing trends over the past few years for small business owners trying to do business with the military.

"We've done five different audits," said Michael J. Roark, assistant inspector general for readiness and global operations at DoD IG, while testifying before the House Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce on May 17. "The consistent challenges contracting officials face is monitoring prime contractors' compliance with individual subcontracting plans and determining why individual contractors with subcontracting plans did not meet their small business subcontracting goals."

Two of the DoD IG audits were performed on the Marine Corps, two others were on the Air Force and the final on the Army.

For the full story click here: https://federalnewsradio.com/defense-main/2018/05/military-not-giving-small-business-subcontractors-a-fair-shake-dod-ig-says/

After four years and expenses of more than $700,000, a California-based small business advocate on Thursday won an agreement from the Justice and Defense departments to pay his legal fees for litigation forcing the government to release confidential contracting data.

Lloyd Chapman, the outspoken founder of the Petaluma-based American Small Business League, declared victory in what he called an "historic" move by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to require the government to pay Chapman $475,000.

Neither Justice nor the Pentagon would comment on the case to Government Executive, but Chapman's award was confirmed by his Washington attorney, Jon Cuneo of Cuneo, Gilbert & Laduca.

For the full story click here: https://www.govexec.com/contracting/2018/08/small-business-advocate-wins-475k-legal-fees-after-4-year-fight-government/150280/