Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program | The Contracting Education Academy

April 17, 2017 By AMK

Pentagon headed to court against small business advocate

A small-business advocate has won a day in court with Pentagon attorneys to argue whether the Defense Department should release shielded internal documents that the plaintiff argues will reveal a government bias against small defense contractors.

Lloyd Chapman, founder of the Petaluma, Calif.-based American Small Business League, for years has sought to expose the workings of the 28-year-old Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program designed to “determine if comprehensive subcontracting plans on a corporate, division or plant-wide basis [instead of for individual contracts] would lead to increased opportunities for small businesses.”

Chapman argues the program covers up ways in which large contractors get work intended for eligible small businesses, and even the Pentagon has expressed a desire for Congress to terminate the program as not effective in organizing contact awards.

On April 12, the small business league announced a new stage in its ongoing suit against the helicopter maker Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. (acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2015) and the DOD. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California, last week set December as the time for a full trial that will include discovery and as many as 10 depositions from the Defense Department on the mysterious program. “The ASBL believes the release of the information will prove the Pentagon has defrauded small businesses out of over two trillion dollars in subcontracts since the program was established in 1989,” the league said.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/04/pentagon-headed-court-against-small-business-advocate/136980

November 30, 2015 By AMK

Obscure Pentagon small business program gets a boost from GAO

A mysterious Defense Department research project designed to test ways to encourage large contractors to hire small businesses earned a recommendation for permanent reauthorization from the Government Accountability Office on Monday, a move that surprised some inside the Pentagon and the small business community.

The 25-year-old Test Program for Negotiation of Comprehensive Small Business Subcontracting Plans, results for which the Pentagon has never reported to Congress or the public, in 2013 helped 12 participating companies avoid “about $18.5 million in costs through the use of single comprehensive subcontracting plans rather than multiple individual subcontracting plans,” the GAO said in a report mandated by the fiscal 2015 National Defense Authorization Act.

GAO found after reviewing contracting activities of a dozen firms, including defense giants Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., the companies had made “acceptable progress” toward enhancing small business opportunities 87 percent of the time, GAO found. “Participants also achieved a 72 percent success rate in increasing small business subcontracts in areas such as integrated circuits and information technology, thus addressing a concern among some small businesses that high-end technical work was not being subcontracted under the program.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/defense/2015/11/obscure-pentagon-small-business-program-gets-boost-gao/123824

To see a list of current participants in DoD’s Test Program, go to: http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sb/initiatives/subcontracting/participants.shtml

May 12, 2015 By AMK

Advocacy group accuses SBA of misapplying law on small business set-asides

As it celebrates National Small Business Week, the Small Business Administration is facing renewed accusations that its efforts to reserve work for small contractors have been distorted by accounting tricks and misapplication of the law that permits large companies to win the awards.

Public Citizen, the nonprofit that pushes an anti-corporate view of trade, the environment, campaign finance and product regulation issues, released a report on Wednesday saying SBA “may be flouting the law,” perhaps for political reasons.

The study of controversies over the SBA-coordinated program to help federal agencies meet the goal of 23 percent of purchases from small businesses draws on the work of the Petaluma, Calif.,-based American Small Business League, which has long battled SBA and the Defense Department over the definition of a small business. But the league, Government Executive has learned, does not think Public Citizen’s conclusions go far enough.

The SBA’s claims “that the government has met or nearly met a requirement to make 23 percent of its purchases from small businesses are misleading and rely on methodologies that conflict with federal law and regulations,” argued the report by Taylor Lincoln, research director for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/05/advocacy-group-accuses-sba-misapplying-law-small-business-set-asides/112240

December 10, 2014 By AMK

Pentagon may be forced to release aircraft manufacturer’s contract data

A little-known unit at the Defense Department may have to release data considered proprietary by a major contractor under a Nov. 23 district court ruling favoring a small business advocacy group.

The Petaluma, Calif.-based American Small Business League on Wednesday announced its legal victory. A northern California district judge agreed that the Pentagon should honor the league’s request under the Freedom of Information Act for data Sikorsky submitted to the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program.

That program since 1990 has authorized negotiation, administration and reporting of subcontracting plans on a plant, division or company-wide basis to “determine whether comprehensive subcontracting plans will result in increased subcontracting opportunities for small business while reducing the administrative burden on contractors,” according to the Pentagon website.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2014/12/pentagon-may-be-forced-release-aircraft-manufacturers-contract-data/100175/

July 8, 2014 By AMK

Will an obscure Pentagon small business program live on?

Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon is a 25-year-old research project designed to test a new way of encouraging large contractors to pass along some of their work to small businesses.

Known as the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program, it was set up in 1990 to “determine if comprehensive subcontracting plans on a corporate, division or plant-wide basis [instead of for individual contracts] would lead to increased opportunities for small businesses,” according to its website.

Participants in this elongated research project include a dozen major contractors, from Lockheed Martin Corp. to Northrop Grumman Corp.

Yet the program — created when George H. W. Bush was president and housed within the Office of Small Business that reports to the undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics — has yet to release a single report or data set. And an array of small business groups have long viewed the project as a wasteful distraction that is actually costing them opportunities by allowing the major firms leeway to get around the governmentwide goal of awarding 23 percent of contract dollars to small business.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2014/07/will-obscure-pentagon-small-business-program-live/87769

A small-business advocate has won a day in court with Pentagon attorneys to argue whether the Defense Department should release shielded internal documents that the plaintiff argues will reveal a government bias against small defense contractors.

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