Small businesses are seeing new legislation, funding, and studies all working to right the wrongs of many centuries. But are these efforts just on paper, or are they bearing the fruits of success?

With the presidential election being just some months away- this is also a test for the Biden-Harris administration, which has been promoting the upliftment and empowerment of small businesses throughout their tenure through various legislative and monetary reforms.

FY23 has been particularly favorable for the federal government exceeding 23% of the subcontracting goals, and awarding 28.4% of federal contract dollars to small businesses. This amounts to $178.6 billion in investment, which is an increase of $15.7 billion from FY 22. This investment has helped to create a million new jobs across several industries.

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) recently published the annual scorecard for FY 23. This scorecard helps to achieve three things:

1. How different federal agencies are reaching their small business and socio-economic prime and subcontracting goals
2. Provide the public with accurate and transparent contracting data
3. Provide detailed agency-specific progress report

The SBA works with federal agencies every year to set goals for different prime and subcontracting goals for small businesses, and businesses owned by disadvantaged businesses (DBEs), service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSB), and small businesses located in Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZones).

Each agency has different goals, and depending on their fulfillment, they receive their annual grades (a lot like our K-12 system). The total goal must match the federal government's 23% target and socio-economic goals as defined by statute.

Agencies can receive an A+ grade for meeting or surpassing 120 percent of their targets and an A grade for those between 100 percent and 119 percent. A B grade is given for 90 to 99 percent, while a C for 80 to 89 percent, a D for 70 to 79 percent, and an F for less than 70 percent. 

SBA measures achievements across four categories:

• Prime contracting achievements (50% of grades)
• Subcontracting achievements (20% of grades)
• Comparison of the Number of Small Business Prime Contractors in each of the Five Small Business Categories in the agency’s Small Business NAICS Codes Between FY 2017 and FY 2018 (10% of grades)
• OSDBU Peer Review on Agency Compliance with Section 15(k) of the Small Business Act (currently 21 requirements) (20% of grades)

Ten government agencies obtained A+ marks, while another 12 received A grades. The federal government received an A on this year's government-wide rating.  

The US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization  (OSDBU) received an “A” grade. This feat has been achieved for 15 consecutive years, and in FY 23, USDOT provided a record total funding of $2.2 billion to disadvantaged businesses through prime and subcontracting opportunities.

Federal agencies exceeded their Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) spending goal of 12% for FY 23 and awarded $76.2 billion to these businesses. Meanwhile, the SDVOSB spending surpassed its 3% goal of reaching 5%, which is almost $31.9 billion spent on procurement from these veteran-owned businesses.

HUBZone businesses were awarded the highest amount of federal contracts since the inception of the program, which were worth $17.5 billion.

Women-owned businesses received record-high federal contracting dollars worth $30.9 billion. Small business subcontractors received $86.4 billion in federal government subcontracts.

This significant progress has been made possible due to strategic leadership provided by SBA administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman and the introduction of some generational bills like IIJA, CHIPS and Science ACT, etc.