Check the Math
The U.S. Small Business Administration FY 2021 Small Business Procurement Scorecard is wrong, and America’s Small Businesses are being mislead.
This is one of those rare opportunities where an image is worth a thousand words, or tens of billions of dollars in federal agency obligations. The Small Business Administration (SBA.gov) claims the U.S. Government achieved an overall grade of ‘A’ on the annual scorecard, by obligation $154.2 billion to Small Business Concerns. Let’s unpack this.
- SBA cites $154.2 billion in obligations helped with this achievement. However, is you total the dollars represented below (in the red outline box) the total obligations are $282.1 billion dollars. How does this work? Double and triple counting of the same dollars under multiple socioeconomic designations, that’s how.
- Of the $154.2 billion represented in this report, $65 billion was obligated to Small Business Concerns without the use of Set-Asides or Sole Source Procedures. Why does the Government get those dollars counted towards their goal? Removing the $65 billion, or 42 percent of the obligations SBA counts towards this achievement, would go a long way (but not all the way) to showing what’s truly happening with Small Business Goal Achievement. I think it’s time.
As long as the current formula is used to calculate Government achievement, the watering down of fuel for America’s economic engine, will continue.
Peace, Health, Success and Better Math,
Go-To-Guy Timberlake
