Summary: Federal policy requires that small businesses receive the maximum practicable opportunity for providing goods and services to federal agencies through prime contracts--direct contracts between the government and a contractor. The Department of Energy (DOE) buys more than $20 billion in goods and services annually. GAO was asked to (1) discuss DOE's key efforts to increase small business prime contracting opportunities and (2) identify the management challenges DOE faces in improving its small business prime contracting performance. In addition to these objectives GAO is providing information on the management of small business programs by other federal agencies that either share certain characteristics with DOE's largest program offices or that have components that share certain characteristics with these offices.
Key DOE efforts to increase small business prime contracting have included identifying more contracting opportunities for small businesses, expanding small business development and outreach activities, and increasing program management and oversight. The department has had some success in redirecting to small businesses portions of contracts to manage large DOE facilities, as well as in securing additional small business prime contracting opportunities from the department's other contracts. As a result, the total dollars awarded annually as prime contracts to small businesses have increased, and the share of procurement dollars awarded to small business in 2005 was DOE's second highest ever. Despite these gains, however, DOE was unable to meet its small business prime contracting goal in 4 of the past 5 years. DOE faces two key management challenges to improving its small business program. Addressing these challenges will bring DOE's small business program more in line with the practices associated with high-performing organizations and with principles contained in the Government Performance and Results Act. Specifically, DOE has not defined the concrete steps necessary to enable it to achieve its prime contracting goal and does not collect sufficient information to effectively assess its small business program efforts, identify problems, and implement changes that could further increase small business prime contracting. Other federal agencies with missions or agency components with missions similar to DOE periodically comprehensively evaluate their programs to determine effectiveness, identify problems and make changes intended to improve performance. GAO obtained information from the following three agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of the Army (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), and the Department of Health and Human Services (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
