Are Giant Companies Taking Advantage of NASA’s Small Business Program

The Government Executive website has a bit more on the lawsuit filed by the American Small Business League against NASA over the release of contracting data:

The federal government sets out to award 23 percent of the total value of all prime contracts to small businesses annually. The Small Business Administration negotiates individual objectives for each agency, ensuring that when combined they meet the overall statutory goals.

But advocates say instances of large corporations being listed as small businesses in federal contracting awards keep cropping up. ASBL spokesman Christopher Gunn said large companies that showed up in data on small business awards in 2008 included Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp.

Corporations that raked in billions of dollars in federal contracts and did not meet the criteria for being small were labeled as such in Washington Technology’s top 2010 government contractors, a list compiled from government procurement data, said Guy Timberlake, chief executive officer of The American Small Business Coalition, which helps small businesses win federal contracts and strengthens their partnerships with the government.

Whether these cases resulted from mistakes in data entry or fraud remains a point of contention between the federal government and advocacy groups.

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