Many of you out there might be thinking to yourself, “There are so many opportunities for people and contractors who have security clearances…Maybe I should get one!” Not so fast—most people don’t realize that there are specific requirements that must be met in order to qualify for a security clearance. I’d like to take a moment to outline just a few of these requirements, the basic levels of clearance, and how these levels are granted. How do I qualify? To be eligible for a security clearance, the following conditions must be met: a) It has been determined by the U.S. government that you’re eligible for access to classified information; and b) you are sponsored by a government entity or a cleared contractor. In order to be sponsored, you must be employed by a cleared contractor (or hired as a consultant) and must be in a position requiring a clearance. These two conditions are important to remember.

With the recent Veterans Day holiday having already passed, I have been giving extra thought to those in the service and wanted to finish up my initial blog covering the effectiveness of Executive Order 13360. To recap, Executive Order 13360 or “the 21 Gun Salute initiative” was implemented by the General Services Administration (GSA) and aimed at meeting and exceeding the 3% federal contracting goal with SDVOSBs. Here’s what I found out. Did Executive Order 13360 work? (Part 2 – The Results) On my last blog I reported that the Department of Defense only spent 1.43% on SDVOSB Prime contractors (1.35% for Subcontractors) in 2009. This was just my first search, however, and was sure I would see much better results from the rest of our federal agencies. I mean, 3% isn’t that lofty of a goal, is it? Well, here’s how the rest of the results looked (Format of the table below is Agency, 2008 SDVOSB Prime Contracting Achievement, 2009 Goal, 2009 SDVOSB Prime Contracting Achievement)

The recent changes to the Women Owned Small Businesses (WOSB) Program were finalized and submitted to the Federal Register on October 7th. After analyzing data gathered from a study conducted by RAND Corporation on the representation of WOSBs in specific industries, the SBA found that 83 industries (segmented by the first 4 numbers in the NAICS code) were either underrepresented or significantly underrepresented. The new WOSB program requirements are only applicable to these industries. The contract value for each WOSB set-aside is not to exceed $5 million for manufacturing and $3 million for all other services and products and the WOSB set-aside requirement for total federal contracting dollars is 5%.

One of the most common challenges new contractors face after receiving a GSA Schedule contract is where to find new business. Often times a contractor is unsure of what agencies to market to and who is interested in their services or products. Not only can new contractors sell their products through GSA Schedules to other agencies, but they can also sell directly toGSA. In FY2010, GSA reported $16,978,003,265 dollars spent from 910,020 transactions. That’s a lot of opportunity! For FY2011, the General Services Administration has recently updated its website to include some very useful bid and opportunity listings, titled “Forecast of Contracting Opportunities.” This is a complete forecast of opportunities that GSA suspects it will need for the upcoming fiscal year (October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011), as well as any known opportunities for the following fiscal years. The opportunities you will find on this forecast are all at or above the $25,000 threshold and are anticipated awards to both large and small businesses. It is a downloadable file that you can export into Microsoft Excel. From there, you can search and filter by date of opportunity, by North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code, by location, etc. The descriptions of the opportunities include the primary NAICS code, the state where the opportunity is located, what type of product or service GSA is searching for, the award status, a procurement classification code, what type of qualifications are required, what type of contract it is, an estimated contract amount (min and max), the contracting officer in charge of the procurement, the contracting officer’s contact information, and the incumbent if there is one.

Back in July, the SBA created an initiative which entailed creating 10 economic "clusters" (defined by the SBA as “collaborations between small businesses, the public sector, economic developers, and local institutions to advance a local industry sector”) that have been called “Innovative Economies.” Those small businesses awarded each received a cash grant of $600,000 which was given to each cluster’s organizing entity to build viable opportunities for the small businesses within each of the various clusters. Cluster development strategies are a tool for the promotion of the economic development in a region. SBA sought proposals from entities that lead regional cluster projects that will provide services to small businesses involved in clusters such as training, counseling, mentoring, technology transfer assistance and other services relevant to small businesses. The awardees were announced on September 20, 2010 and supported two types of innovative economies: Regional Innovation Clusters and Advanced Defense Technologies. These ten Innovative Economies include:

When submitting an offer to GSA, the overall process and interaction with GSA is typically consistent: 1) creation of offer, 2) submittal of the offer to GSA, 3) wait for the offer to be assigned to a GSA Contracting Officer, 4) engage in formal offer clarifications with the assigned CO, 5) negotiate offer terms and pricing with the Contracting Officer and, 6) receive a contract award!