Thank you guys for this opportunity to
speak to you and share a little bit
about advocacy in action. So, I am new to
the OSDBU Office but I have 16 years
from GSA and small business and it's a
passion for me I've gone through a
couple of different parts of my career
over 29 years of contracting and policy
and just kind of job hopping looking for
the thing that meant the most to me and
advocacy is the thing that really caught
my heart I guess you could say. Is it
working but thank you. So what is it
about advocacy and the OSDBU Office?
We are actually put in place by Congress,
it's a mandate to really raise the roof
for small business, to make sure that
people understand the value that they
bring and that there's opportunity for
them. We do so much to take them to the
next level, whether it's counseling and
education, or that's working with our
acquisition staff to really understand
the value of setting aside opportunities,
it is a huge honor to be able to
represent small businesses in this
particular agency and being here as a
new employee it's been very impressive
to see how much DOE already works with
small businesses on their own even
without our push. So thank you for that.
Why is this so
important? So our small businesses of
course affect our economy, they affect
job growth, they affect you know just
entrepreneurship being able to stand out
and each of you at some point probably
has looked at what will I do after my
career? What will I do when I retire? Do I
want to start my own business? You've
probably gone to a small business and
ordered you know some food or doughnuts
usually a lot of the places that are
small are the most impressive because
they work so hard it's usually the
people there in the store that own the
store, the moms and pops that wake up in
the morning
to make things happen, but some small
businesses are actually quite large and
you wouldn't think they were small so every
little bit makes a difference of how we
work for them and there are so many
opportunities in the agency for small
businesses to be involved. The ways that
that OSBDU gets involved specifically
is we look at the acquisitions that are
done in the agency and we look to see if
there are set aside opportunities. We
also will be starting to look at
subcontracting plans and determining if
there's large businesses who are working
with small businesses are really giving
those small businesses an opportunity.
There's so many areas of oversight that
are very important that are often missed
and this is a great opportunity for us
to stand out in the agency and really
get that kind of support. There's also
internal and external training that will
be happening with our office, we'll be
training the internal staff on how to
set aside opportunities and key areas. A
lot of times the buyer will pick what's
easy, whether it's a a day or small
business and forget about some of the
sub categories, like service-disabled
veteran-owned businesses, HUBZone
women-owned businesses, and so while our
agency has been fairly successful in
working with different parts of the
agency we haven't been really setting
aside in our sub category, so we could be
better doing better. The way that you can
make an impact is by really choosing
small business, by giving them a chance
and seeing them at the resource for
doing business. We want to make sure that
you have access to all the small
businesses that can work with you, we
want to start doing some industry days
to really identify those resources, I've
been meeting with all the senior
management to really understand what the
needs are, and we want to change really
your engagement with us because we are
your partner. Our office doesn't award
any contracts, we can't put anything in
place, we can't meet our small business
goals without the contracting people. And
so it's very important that you see us
as a resource to support you and my
staff is working very hard to just
really build their knowledge and
experience and to be that resource when
you need it. Another level influences our
policy we not only look to influence
policy and as far as what's all the
out there, but when there's policy
changes or rules are being made we have
the opportunity to give feedback and so
proposed changes are not just done there
is a process of getting feedback and
making sure that it's not hurting anyone.
So our office is taking on that
responsibility of looking at proposed
changes and really deciding is this
going to hurt small business? Is going to
be a negative impact on them? Is it going
to make contracting harder for you to
work with them? All those things are
important for us to analyze and get
feedback on before the policy becomes
final so that is another part of our
office you may not know that we are
responsible for. So in 2016 I'll say
preliminary success we're not allowed to
say it until SBA releases the final
information, but we are on a very
positive road towards success. For those
of you who know about the m and o contracts,
management and operations contracts, they
are a big contribution to us being a
successful prior to this we were
basically receiving an F on our
scorecard, when other agencies have been
receiving an A+. The A+ comes
with the subcategories that I mentioned
before and so while we've been really
great with small business in 8a we
really need to increase also with a
HUBZone, the women owned businesses, and
the service disabled veteran owned
businesses. So what we need from you is
to set aside opportunities, increase
subcontracting whenever possible, really
look at joining one of our working
groups, we've just started a working
group to improve the acquisition process -
especially the 4220's, looking at the way
we engage our small business program
managers, making sure that it's
meaningful for them as well as for us,
really looking at the way we engage the
agency overall, and really improving that
process so that you see us as a partner
and a resource to you, and just being
able to share your success with us as
well. We'll be starting the newsletter
next month that will highlight where we
are with our goal, what the agency is
doing, what are some initiatives in our
office, and what other offices are doing
to help small businesses. We have a great
voucher program that I just heard about
coming into this agency and not a lot of
people knew
so we want to highlight all the good
work that you already do and really
encourage you to keep going in that
direction. So thank you for this
opportunity to share and i hope you will
you know enjoy this information.