Last year the Department of Energy awarded procurement dollars to small businesses for the second highest year ever in 2005, but the Government Accountability Office says the agency needs to address two key challenges to improve the management of its small business program to achieve its goals.
GAO said the agency missed its small business prime contracting goals in four of the past five years, and needs to define steps for moving forward.
DoE also needs to collect sufficient information to effectively assess its small business program efforts, identify problems, and implement changes that could further increase small business prime contracting, according to GAO-06-501.
It said the department, which buys more than $20 billion in goods and services each year, has redirected to small businesses portions of contracts to manage large facilities, as well as other contracts and has achieved some success in expanding small business development and increasing program management and oversight.
However, GAO also said other federal agency or agency components with similar missions to DoE — namely the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — periodically comprehensively evaluate their programs to determine effectiveness, identify problems and make changes intended to improve performance.
The report recommended that DoE should do the same.
