Government expected to hire more small businesses

Small business contracting has had a pivotal year and will continue seeing significant growth rates in the federal acquisition space, said a panelist in a discussion on federal acquisition hosted by the Association for Federal Information Resources Management

"IDIQ contracting is very, very important, and it represents a really significant portion of the federal marketplace" said Nancy Suslov, director of civilian business development at Technical and Management Resources, Inc. "If you're not tuned into that market, you're in effect missing a significant part of the marketplace."

The Obama administration's 25-point plan to reform federal IT has been one of drivers of the IDIQ marketplace, particularly in the areas of data center consolidation and cloud computing adoption, Suslov said. Another trend has been the focus on small businesses, Suslov said, with the White House issuing a number of memorandums last and this year on the use of small businesses. A Feb. 11, 2011 memo from the Office of Management and Budget, for instance, emphasized methods to increase small business participation in federal contracting.

However, it was not until Nov. 2 of this year that small business orders could be set aside on an existing IDIQ on a GSA schedule, Suslov said. The date marked the event when administration officials released an interim rule about revisions to the Federal Acquisition Regulation to match the fluctuation toward task- and delivery-order contracts, including governmentwide acquisition contracts. "Now, every single IDIQ contract and every single schedule contain a mechanism to use small-business requirements," Suslov said.

Many Federal Government enterprises are focused on programs to consolidate data centers and introduce cloud computing to deliver significant efficiencies to daily operations. During it is important to implement these options for saving valuable resources, it is as well possible to gain measurable improvement by reviewing traditional internal processes that as well can be optimized to leverage today's technologies, information-sharing opportunities, and cost-reduction objectives. Read more