A Government Accountability Office report indicates a standstill in the Small Business Administration‘s procurement scorecard progress and recommends evaluating new scoring methodologies to further encourage contract award opportunities for small businesses.
The SBA changed methodologies of the Small Business Procurement Scorecard in fiscal 2017 in adherence to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 and has yet to assess whether the said amendments contribute toward making the scorecard a tool to help the agency achieve its goals, GAO said Thursday.
Some of the changes include decreasing total scorecard grade share for prime contracting achievement; increasing grade share for subcontracting achievement and adding an element that takes note of changes in the number of small businesses that obtained prime contracts.
The GAO noted that as of July, SBA officials have yet to release a draft plan to examine the effects of the revised scorecard.
The watchdog added that the published 2017 scorecards had factual errors that may influence confidence in scorecard data.
GAO has instructed SBA to perform a comprehensive evaluation to analyze the effectivity of scorecard revisions, develop a method to ensure scorecard accuracy prior to publication and lay out a platform to divulge erroneous information.