Case Study

Small Business Development Consulting –

U.S. Federal Government

Overview

The United States federal government has established statutory requirements for its agencies to ensure that small businesses receive adequate opportunities to compete for contractual opportunities.  As a result, they contracted NatCom to conduct in-depth studies of various government departments to determine the adequacy of their small business procurement programs. Our agency’s initial assignment for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) soon evolved into similar studies for the Department of Health and Human Services, (DHHS) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Treasury (Treasury).  The collective programs were budgeted at $500,000.

Objective

To ensure that small and disadvantaged businesses are treated equally and have a reasonable opportunity to compete for federal government contracts.

Strategy

Determined if a Department was meeting its goals for small business participation by conducting person-to-person interviews with qualified employees, combined with historical in-depth studies of the procurement process.

Tactics

NatCom typically began its evaluation of a small business procurement program with a thorough analysis of a Department’s procurement program during the five preceding years. The study was followed by interviews with senior department management, acquisition and program staff employees and large/small vendors doing business with the related Department.  Overall, thousands of Department personnel and key stakeholders were interviewed.

Results

At the conclusion of each assignment, NatCom submitted a detailed report on the effectiveness of the Department’s small business procurement program, together with an extensive list of short and long-term recommendations. As an example of the success of our programs, HUD, in the span of two years, rose from the lowest federal rating in small business contracting to the highest in agency performance.  NatCom was awarded a Best Practices Award from HUD in the year 2003.

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