Forensics, consulting, information technology services, engineering. The small businesses showing the fastest growth in the government sector also showcase a variety of services and niches that contractors can thrive in.
Mary Ann Elliott doesn't believe there's anything she can't do. A wife at 14 and a mother at 15, she was selling encyclopedias part time when her husband was killed in a car crash in 1975. Knowing she needed full-time work to support herself and three children, Elliott applied for work at Motorola, which had just started hiring women. She was turned down three times.
Innovative public-private partnerships are creating new revenue opportunities for both contractors and government agencies ? and new reasons to scrutinize the public values of such arrangements.
CDW Government Inc. has created a small business consortium, which the Vernon Hills, Ill., information technology reseller said will help small and disadvantaged businesses win federal contracts.
The Commerce Department this week issued the solicitation for Commerce Information Technology Services Next Generation, a small-business governmentwide acquisition contract for information technology. The multiple-award contract has a ceiling of $8 billion over 10 years.
The National Security Agency and Nokia Corp.'s incubator have formed the Chesapeake Innovation Center, a homeland security business incubator in Annapolis, Md.
As the first phase of the Army's new logistics systems rolls out, both the service and prime contractor Computer Sciences Corp., El Segundo, Calif., are realizing the benefits of using commercial software to get the job done.
The Defense Information Systems Agency is issuing an RFP for its Coalition and Advanced Information Technology Integration and Operations acquisition. The small-business contract will support the transfer of advanced IT from research and experimentation through pilot operations to deployment and full-scale implementation with the Defense Information Infrastructure. The contract is for one year with four one-year options; two one-year incentive award term periods are possible. Details can be found via fedbizopps.gov, solicitation no. DCA100-03-R-4020FINALRFP, or at www.ditco.disa.mil/dcop.
The General Services Administration and the Small Business Administration are fixing government databases that incorrectly classify many large federal contractors as small businesses.
The Air Force Space Command's 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., awarded the $429 million Western Range Operations Communications and Information contract to InDyne Inc. It is one of the largest federal IT contracts ever for a small business.
Competitive stress on mid-sized federal contractors has risen in recent years. Contract bundling is increasing the size prime contractors need to be; at the same time, the administration is pushing for more contract awards to small and disadvantaged businesses.
Indianapolis Chief Information Officer Mike Hineline doesn't hesitate to acknowledge the shortcomings of local government when it comes to delivering electronic services to citizens and businesses.
In January, Texas attorney Riecke Baumann filed the first electronic lawsuit in Fort Bend County, Texas, while sitting in his Houston office, an hour drive from the courthouse.
Homeland security contracting has emerged over the past 18 months as an area of intense interest in the contracting community. Many large systems integrators have shuffled priorities and resources to go after this growing market, and hosts of smaller companies, many of them new to the government market, have set their sights on entry into this field.
Federal agencies missed their aim of sending 23 percent of prime contracting dollars to small businesses for the third straight year, according to the annual scorecard produced by Democratic members of the House Committee on Small Business.
Optimism and frustration represent an unusual ying-yang, especially for technology entrepreneurs who are living through - "surviving" may be a better description - this era of unprecedented change.
