House Small Business Committee Chairman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Ranking Member Nydia Velazquez (D-New York) have asked the General Services Administration for updates on the agency’s efforts to give small businesses opportunities in competitions for federal contracts.
Chabot and Velazquez told GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth in a letter published April 5 that GSA has made it more difficult for small businesses to do business with federal agencies through the adoption of the Category Management contract vehicles instead of Multiple Award Schedules.
“Many of the new contracting vehicles coming out of GSA have bundled so many goods together in one contract that a lot of small businesses do not have the capabilities to bid for it, despite having previously provided some of the goods or services under the MAS contracts,†the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers described in the letter their views on the potential impact of GSA’s proposed Transactional Data Rule on small firms as well as the amount of contracts awarded by the agency to small businesses for fiscal year 2015.
“In the last fiscal year, GSA excluded approximately 60 percent of the total dollars spent by the agency when it calculated the eligible small business dollars,†the lawmakers said.
“Based on this data, GSA awarded only 18 percent of its dollars to small businesses rather than the 44 percent published in the Small Business Goaling Report.â€