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Which agency spent the most prime contract dollars with small business vendors?
Of the 23 federal agencies that reported issuing at least $100 million in prime contracts during FY 2001, which one of the following five agencies spent the highest percentage of their prime contract dollars with small business vendors? A) Department of the Interior B) Department of Transportation C) Office of Personnel Management D) Agency for International Development E) Small Business Administration
This week's quiz addresses a familiar issue -- the small business share of federal agency contracts. But the question is tricky nonetheless. Using your FPC database you can answer the quiz in 90 seconds. Here's how:
First, fire up your FPC FY 2001 Quarters 1-4 application and clear all prior filter criteria. Log to the Agency Active View Screen. Next, call up either the Search Wizard or Advanced Search Dialog by clicking the appropriate Search button on the Sidebar, just below the Favorite Views menu. You will want to select the Contract group of fields and, in that group, select the Type of Business field. In the Type of Business field search box, type A or B (A for SDB, B for Other Small Business), then click OK to queue up the hits. Finally, click the Apply button to run the filter and view the results.
The field search process will automatically return you to the Active View displayed when you began the search. When the Agency Active View Screen re-appears, click the Total $ column twice to order the list of selected agencies in descending order by their total reported prime contract expenditures. Remember: The Total $ column is the sum of prime contract expenditures for each gency regardless of your active filter criteria. The View $ is the sum of selected dollars based on your search criteria.
When the Total $ column is in descending order, scan down the list and identify each of the listed agencies above. You will find that the SBA has the highest small business percentage -- no surprise there -- but that it is not a $100 million agency. So E cannot be our answer. Scan up a little higher on the list and you will see that at 64% the Office of Personnel Management spends nearly one out of every three of its prime contract dollars on small businesses. This exceeds the federal small business contracting goal by 200%! Further up the list the other three agencies appear with lesser small business percentages, so the correct answer to this week's quiz is C.
Bonus question: what significant contracting characteristic do all the agencies listed in this week's quiz have in common? What does this suggest to you if you are a small business vendor?
Data supplied by Eagle Eye Publishers, Inc.
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