WASHINGTON – The Obama Administration Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring that minority-owned and small businesses, including women- and veteran-owned businesses, have greater access to federal government contracting opportunities.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Small Business Administrator Karen Mills announced a government-wide plan that includes federal agency procurement officials holding or participating in more than 200 events over the next 90 days to share information on government contracting opportunities, including those available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“Small and minority-owned businesses must play a significant role in our efforts to restore economic growth. Small businesses employ half of the nation’s private sector workforce; create a large share of the Nation’s new jobs; and introduce many groundbreaking ideas into the marketplace,” President Barack Obama said. “It is essential that we provide our Nation’s small businesses with maximum practicable opportunity to participate in Federal Government contracting.”
Mills said Locke will be leading a federal government-wide initiative to increase outreach.
“Over the course of the next ninety days agency officials will take an important step forward by holding or participating in more than two-hundred events focused on sharing information on government contracting opportunities.”
Locke said it has become a priority for the Obama Administration to ensure that small and minority-owned businesses are aware of and have access to federal contracts and funding opportunities.
“Over the past 40 years, minority-owned businesses have grown from 300,000 to nearly 4 million today. Their success and the success of small American businesses are vital to our economic recovery.”
As part of the Commerce-SBA initiative, over the next 90 days:
Federal agency procurement officials will hold or participate in more than 200 events to share information on government contracting opportunities, including those available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
SBA and Commerce will expand their outreach to fellow contracting officials across the federal government, passing along best practices for outreach and education to every agency to ensure they have the tools they need to meet their annual contracting goals.
Locke and Mills will promote small business contracting opportunities in remarks, events and discussions with small business groups across the country, including minority, women and veteran groups.
Beyond the next 90 days, Commerce and SBA will support, monitor and track the impact of these efforts going forward to help ensure the Administration is maximizing opportunities for small businesses.
Small business owners can find out about federal contracting opportunities by click on FedBizOpps.Gov
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