Presidential Task Force on Federal Contracting Opportunities for Small Businesses

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
(from Task Force Report)
Develop clearer and more comprehensive small business contracting policies:
• Recommendation 1: Update acquisition policies and regulations to provide clear guidance on small business set-asides and related tools.
• Recommendation 2: Issue guidance clarifying practices and strategies to prevent unjustified contract bundling and mitigate any negative effects of justified contract bundling on small businesses.
• Recommendation 3: Develop a government-wide framework for Mentor-Protégé programs and clarify rules for small business teaming.
• Recommendation 4: Strengthen the requirements for small business subcontracting plans and enhance the electronic subcontracting reporting system.
• Recommendation 5: Identify where focused efforts will likely have the most positive effect on increasing small business utilization in prime contracting.
• Recommendation 6: Clarify the relationship between policies that address the rebalancing of agencies’ relationship with contractors and small business contracting policies, and evaluate the impact of in-sourcing on federal small business contractors.
• Recommendation 7: Conduct a full review of the SBA Surety Bond program, the financial products it offers, and its current funding to determine if it is meeting the current needs of small businesses. 
Provide for a better trained workforce and hold agencies accountable for meeting small business goals:
• Recommendation 8: Strengthen the skills of the acquisition workforce by revising existing core certification, requiring training on small business contracting, procurement policies and regulations, and creating focused refresher materials for continuous learning.
• Recommendation 9: Use meaningful “carrots and sticks” to create a greater sense of agency accountability for reaching small business federal contracting goals.
• Recommendation 10: Facilitate the identification and rapid adoption of best practices across the agencies to maximize successful strategies. 
Leverage technology to enhance transparency, increase federal procurement accessibility for small businesses, and improve data quality:
• Recommendation 11: Enhance FedBizOpps, the government-wide point of entry on business opportunities, to also serve as a one-stop resource for annual requirements forecasting agencies’ prime contracting opportunities and for posting subcontracting opportunities, the outreach calendar of all federal agency matchmaking and training events, and as a directory of online agency small business resources.
• Recommendation 12: Improve the accessibility and usability of small business procurement data in the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).
• Recommendation 13: Improve data quality related to small business contracting through use of validation rules and improved systems integration.

View the full report here.

President’s Memorandum for Heads of Agencies and Executive Departments on the Interagency Task Force