There are still reasons to doubt whether thegovernment is meeting its contracting goals for small businesses, despite theSmall Business Administration's report that 25 percent of federalprocurement dollars went to small companies in fiscal 2014.

"Large firms continue to receive contracts thatare counted toward small business goals," the SBA's inspector general concludedin its annual report on theagency's most serious management challenges.

The Small Business Administration'sinspector general says the agency needs to take… more

Under a goal set by Congress, small businessesare supposed to receive 23 percent of the federal government's contractingdollars.

Some big businesses may be misrepresentingtheir size to the government, but other cases of inaccurate reporting of smallbusiness contracting data may be due to mistakes by procurement officials, theinspector general concluded. In either case, small businesses are harmedbecause they lose out on contracts that should have gone to them, and the SBA'scredibility is damaged.

The inspector general's report identifiedseveral specific areas that should be addressed in order to make small businesscontracting data more accurate:

• Procurement officers should no longer beallowed to count contracts awarded to businesses that have left the 8(a)program or the Hubzone program toward those programs' contracting goals.They're able to do so under current SBA regulations, the inspector generalsaid. That inflates the numbers for the 8(a) program, which helpsminority-owned businesses, and the Hubzone program, which helps businesseslocated in low-income areas.

• The SBA needs to make more progress inaddressing weaknesses in the 8(a) mentor-protege program that allow agencies tocount contracts where large businesses do most of the work as small businesscontracts.

• The SBA should require that women-ownedbusinesses be certified by the federal government, states or an SBA-approvednational certifying entity in order to receive contracts set aside for women-ownedbusinesses. That was supposed to happen under a law passed by Congress lastDecember, which also gave contracting officials the power to award sole-sourcecontracts to women-owned businesses.

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