The White House has announced reforms to the federal procurement process to advance equity and increase the share of federal contracts to small disadvantaged businesses (SDB).
One of the proposed changes is asking agencies to surpass the existing goal of 5 percent by spending 11 percent of fiscal 2022 contracting dollars on SDBs as part of efforts to meet President Biden’s goal of ensuring that 15 percent of federal contracting dollars go to such businesses by 2025, up from an average of 9.8 percent in the last five years, according to a fact sheet published Thursday.
The government will also provide updated goals for women-owned small businesses, HUBZone businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and other socioeconomic categories.
Other reforms outlined in the document are the release of disaggregated data of federal contracting spend by ethnicity and race of business owner, efforts to increase the number of new small business entrants to the federal marketplace, adoption of key management practices to promote accountability and the need to ramp up contracting opportunities for underserved small companies through the introduction of major changes to federal agencies’ use of category management.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will release updated guidance on category management to help agencies adopt more equitable procurement practices.
