In the sixth of its annual studies, a small business advocacy group hasagain blasted the government for allegedly awarding contracts to majorcorporations when policy intends for them to go to legitimate small businesses.The Small Business Administration offered other possible explanations for theapparent discrepancies.

The Petaluma, Calif.-based American Small Business League's new study offiscal 2013 procurement data concluded that of the top 100 companies receivingthe highest-valued small business federal contracts, "79 were large companiesthat exceeded the SBA's small business size standards, five were anomalous and16 were legitimate small businesses."

The group's annual studies also show that the number of top-100 contractingcompanies that are large firms has risen steadily, from 60 in fiscal 2009 to 84in fiscal 2013.

The large corporations that received the contracts in question in fiscal2013 included Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp., Boeing Co.,General Electric, Oracle Corp., Apple Inc., Verizon, Bank of America Corp.,Citigroup Inc., PepsiCo, Comcast Corp., Intel Corp., John Deere Co. and manymore, said the league, which published brief company-by-company profiles.

"Once again, large companies are the fraudulent recipients of a largeportion of federal small business contracts," League President Lloyd Chapmansaid in a statement. "This practice is disastrous to our economy and hurtingthe American people. The ASBL urges leaders to enforce renewed oversight andmonitoring of federal small business programs."

Asked for a response, an SBA official declined to comment on the league'smethodology but reiterated the agency's commitment to getting contracts tosmall businesses. "In some instances, a legitimate small business may appear tobe 'other than small' in the Federal Procurement Data System," said JohnShoraka, associate administrator for government contracting and businessdevelopment. "This occurs for a variety of reasons, including the growth of abusiness, mergers and acquisitions, or human data entryerror. SBA has no tolerance for fraud, waste and abuse, and takescorrective steps when actionable information comes to light."

Shoraka stressed that SBA over the past three years has initiated moregovernmentwide suspension and debarment actions against contractors than in theprevious 10 years. "The fact that a contract awarded to a large business iscoded in a database as an award to a small business does not mean that thecontract was taken away from a small business or that small businessessuffered," he said. "Unless a contract was set aside for a small business, thedesignation as a small business does not benefit that business in receiving theaward.  The designation could be a result of a mistake on the part of the contractingofficer, who actually enters the designation in the database, or the firm whenfiling its representation for that contract."

He added that SBA has a protest process for the size representation incontracts containing small business set-asides. "SBA cannot alter thefederal procurement data that has been [entered] into FPDS," he said. "However,we are continuously taking steps to improve data integrity. Each agency isresponsible for ensuring the quality of its own contracting data, but SBA conductsadditional analysis to help agencies identify any potential dataanomalies.  As part of its ongoing data quality efforts, SBA iscontinuing to work with federal agency procurement staff to provide tools toencourage data reviews, improvements to procurement systems and trainingsessions to improve accuracy."

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