Senate Panel Further Ponders Procurement
Jun 21st, 2010 | By Dawn Rivers Baker | Category: Politics & PolicyLast week, I told you about new legislation introduced by Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Committee Member Ben Cardin (D-MD) to improve the 8(a) program for “socially and economically disadvantaged” entrepreneurs — with a focus on federal procurement. Chairwoman Landrieu spent still more time on the issue of federal procurement last week, during a hearing to look into why small firms weren’t getting more contracts to help clean up the mess in the Gulf.
It turns out that the contracting situation in the Gulf was one of the more Keystone Kops-like set ups in recent memory. The feds have received 1,900 proposals and British Petroleum, aka BP, has received more than 35,000 proposals. The feds have actually screened 600 of them. Neither outfit has deployed any to date, while as much as 60,000 barrels of oil per day continue to spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Not much here directly effects microbusinesses but it is a pretty vivid example of the overall problem that small businesses have with working with Uncle Sam. The feds are paperwork intensive, profoundly inefficient, hard to sell and slow to pay. Once again, the need to review processes to make them more small business friendly is key to conquering this issue.
