Statutory Guidelines

Statutory Goals Established by Federal Executive Agencies

The federal government has the following statutory goals for small business procurement:

• 23% of prime contracts for small businesses
• 5% of prime and subcontracts for women-owned small businesses
• 5% of prime and subcontracts for small disadvantaged businesses
• 3% of prime and subcontracts for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses
• 3% of prime subcontracts for HUBZone certified small businesses

Negotiating and Establishing Goals

SBA is responsible for ensuring that the government-wide goal for participation of small businesses is established annually and the reporting agencies' achievements are relative to the goals.

Here is how the goaling process works:

1. SBA negotiates with agencies to establish individual agency goals that, in total, constitute government-wide goals. In addition, SBA also negotiates a small business subcontracting goal based on recent achievement levels, and a HUBZone subcontracting goal equivalent to the required prime HUBZone goal.
2. Before the beginning of the fiscal year, agencies submit their proposed goals to SBA.
3. SBA's Office of Government Contracting determines if these individual agency goals, in total, meet or exceed the government-wide statutorily mandated goals of the Small Business Act in each small business category. At this time all negotiations are considered complete.
4. SBA notifies the agencies of their final agency goals.

Once the goals are established, a letter is then sent to each agency head accepting agency goals. Agencies are informed in this letter that achievements will be measured against the accepted goals.

Calculation of Achievements

At the end of each fiscal year, SBA requests a report from the Federal Procurement Data Center calculating the prime and subcontract statistical achievements for each agency and the government-wide accomplishments. SBA forwards a copy of the report to each agency that negotiates goals with SBA. Each agency that fails to achieve any proposed prime or subcontract goal is required to submit a justification and corrective action plan to SBA.