A procurement rule went into effect Sept. 17 permitting 5 percent incentive payments to contractors and subcontractors that use Native American, Native Alaskan and Native Hawaiian small businesses as subcontractors on Defense Department work worth more than $500,000.
The Small Business Administration this month launched an online application for 8(a) Business Development and Small Disadvantaged Business certification. The new automated application replaces a four-page paper form.
<font color="cc0000"> (UPDATED) </font color>Fifty-one small businesses won spots on the Commerce Information Technology Services Next Generation, a small-business acquisition contract for information technology.
Service-disabled veterans recently got what many women want: a new procurement regulation that allows contracting officers to set aside federal contracts specifically for their small businesses.
Cairo Corp. of Chantilly, Va., has grown nearly 200 percent annually during the past five years and now tops Washington Technology's annual list of the 50 fastest-growing federal IT contractors. Owner and president Alba Alemán said she doesn't want any special treatment from the government because of her gender.
At No. 39 on <I>Washington Technology</I>'s Fast 50, Artel Inc. is about in the middle of the bottom half of the rankings, but that's not such a bad thing. Artel, a Reston, Va., provider of IT, information assurance and telecommunications services, debuts on the rankings with a blistering 61.6 percent compound annual growth rate over the last five years. The company's growth also landed it at No. 97 on the <I>Washington Technology</I> 2004 Top 100 list, which ranks prime government contractors. Such is the potential of the companies found on this year's ranking lists.
Most large technology firms focus like a laser on the biggest buyers in the state and local market. But for small companies, a similar marketing focus could result in missed selling opportunities.
In this annual small-business issue, Washington Technology talked with many people who founded their own companies and made their own fortunes. Interestingly enough, the Beyster Institute has devoted itself to advancing entrepreneurship and employee ownership to build stronger and better-performing enterprises. One leading the charge is Robert Fuller, who has more than 17 years of experience developing entrepreneurial curricula. Among his many accomplishments, Fuller helped implement the Minority Small Business and Capital Ownership Development program for Science Applications International Corp. He recently spoke with Managing Editor Evamarie Socha about entrepreneurship.
Backbone of the nation. Driver of economic growth. Pillar of the American dream. Small businesses have been called all of these things, but being a small business is not easy.
The Air Force this month revealed part of its plan for the multibillion-dollar Network Centric Solutions program at the Air Force IT Conference in Montgomery, Ala.
When Anne Altman started looking for a full-time position at IBM Corp. some 20 years ago, she was turned down for a sales representative job because a male executive who interviewed her said she was not tenacious enough and would make a better systems engineer.
The Air Force Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization and Lockheed Martin Corp. have signed a memorandum of understanding to improve their outreach to small businesses.
A groundbreaking effort by Florida to turn welfare eligibility ruling over to the private sector is facing intense scrutiny by federal agencies that oversee public assistance programs.
As agencies put into place the first blueprints of their IT environments, systems integrators and other contractors face the question of what happens next. Agencies will need help creating more detailed versions of their architectures. SAIC, for example, is already helping DHS with a second version of its plan. But the importance of this work goes well beyond the creation of an enterprise architecture. Contractors now must focus on winning the follow-up -- and possibly more lucrative -- work of implementing enterprise architectures.
The federal government's spending on information technology will slow down over the next five years, but the impact on IT contractors will be minimal, according to London market research firm Datamonitor plc.
The Agriculture Department's National Financial Center is looking for a vendor to provide support services for implementing Extensible Markup Language publishing extensions to its electronic publishing system.
No schedule or multiple-award contract has ever been dedicated to share in savings ? until now. The General Services Administration last month awarded blanket purchase agreements to six companies to sell share-in-savings information technology projects to 19 federal agencies.
The Small Business Administration still plans to simplify its small-business size standards despite its recent decision to reassess changes it proposed in March, according to <b>Gary Jackson</b>, assistant administrator for size standards. Thousands of public comments raised significant concerns about the planned changes and led SBA to pull back.
