New York SBDC Research Network

This is the first post in our " Contracting Corner " series from Judy Wolf, Government Contracting Coordinator, Mohawk Valley SBDC & NY SBDC Procurement Assistance Center Interested in government contracting? There’s good reason to look toward this area of opportunity. According to USAspending.gov, on the federal level in FY 2015 alone, more than $428 billion were spent on nearly 3.4 million contracts. More than 127,000 of those contracts were awarded in New York State, bringing nearly $9.4 billion into New York. Add to that the fact that it is written into law that the federal government has to do everything in its power to funnel 23% of its spending to small businesses, and this equates to great opportunity for entrepreneurs! Federal agencies take this responsibility very seriously. Recent measures to enforce the importance of these goals include adding measurements to the evaluations of senior federal agency officials tracking progress toward meeting small busine

WASHINGTON – Women business owners are invited to learn more about increasing opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the federal contracting arena through free Office Hours Webinars hosted by the U.S. Small Business Administration each Tuesday and Thursday through June 26 at 2 p.m. ET. SBA’s Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract Program presents an opportunity for small businesses to increase their presence in the federal marketplace. The federal government is the biggest buyer in the world and is a must-have customer for women-owned companies. The hour-long webinars will be led by SBA officials, and will help to answer questions and give valuable insight to women entrepreneurs on doing business in the federal marketplace. WHAT: SBA Office Hours Webinars on Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract Program WHEN: May 13 – June 26, 2014, each Tuesday and Thursday: • Tuesday, May 13th, 20th, 27th, June 3rd, June 10th, June 17th, and June 24th • Thursday, May 15th, 22nd

FedSpending.org is a database from OMB Watch that is designed to give journalists, analysts, government officials, and regular citizens easy access to information on federal spending. The website tracks government spending, whether it's through contracts for products and services, grants and loans, or other forms of assistance (including Social Security, veterans' benefits, etc.). The data can be as summarized or as detailed as you like - you can even get minute details on each individual government contract transaction. In the upper left corner of the website, there are three tabs labeled Contracts, Assistance, and Recovery. Select what type of spending you are interested in and click the tab. There are multiple criteria to choose from in basic and advanced search options and though the search was slow, I imagine the database has an extreme amount of data it must search. I clicked on New York State and below is the resulting data on contracts awarded in FY2008. Competiti

I was asked earlier this week to find out who got a contract for a specific service within a specific Congressional district. Normally, these questions fill me with dread. I've never had a reliable source that kept up-to-date information on awardees of Federal contracts, presented in a fairly easy-to-understand format. It was very surprising, then, to discover USASpending.gov. Its mission has a tinge of populism about it: "Have you ever wanted to find more information on government spending? Have you ever wondered where Federal contracting dollars and grant awards go? Or perhaps you would just like to know, as a citizen, what the Government is really doing with your money." Well, as a matter of fact, earlier this week I was very interested in knowing what the Feds did with a specific contract. So, I navigated the site, and arrived here: http://www.usaspending.gov/fpds/index.php?reptype=a Note the left-hand side. It allows you to search for contract awards by a specif