Analysis of Type of Business Coding for the Top 1,000 Contractors Receiving Small Business Awardsin FY 2002

摘要

The Individual Contract Action Report (ICAR), maintained by the General Services Administration's (GSAs) Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) is the governments master contract database of how agencies spend available procurement dollars. Information entered into the FPDS plays a critical role in measuring the success or failure of small business procurement policies each year. A review of the transaction records coded as being awarded to small businesses in the ICAR file identified large vendors as some of the actual recipients. This calls into question the reliability of the FPDS in determining contractor size. Drawing extensively from data in the ICAR file, this study provides a preliminary statistical assessment of the extent to which names of large businesses appear among the awards made to the 1,000 largest small business contractors in FY 2002.