The Protection Division’s Workplace of Small Enterprise Packages has a number of efforts underway to make it simpler for the nation’s small enterprise group to turn into extra concerned in offering items, providers, know-how and analysis in help of the nation’s protection.
Farooq A. Mitha, director of OSBP, spoke Wednesday on the Skilled Companies Council in Arlington, Virginia. He advised representatives of small companies about his workplace’s most up-to-date efforts together with the Division’s newly launched Small Business Strategy.
Previously few months, Mitha stated, the division’s Procurement Technical Help Facilities, about 96 of them throughout the nation, have been rebranded as APEX Accelerators.
These APEX Accelerators have an enhanced mission in serving to current and new companies strengthen the protection industrial base by accelerating innovation, fostering ingenuity and establishing resilient and numerous provide chains.
“We will be doing a whole lot of market analysis utilizing these entities,” Mitha stated. “We will join them nearer to our different prime contractors which can be searching for subcontractors to be a part of their provide chains.”
The APEX Accelerators may even do extra coaching with small companies on points associated to cybersecurity and international possession, management or affect that may have an effect on their skill to work with the federal authorities, Mitha stated.
Efforts are additionally underway to reinvigorate the Fast Innovation Fund, Mitha stated. That program was designed to assist small companies get their know-how from the prototype stage to the manufacturing stage — a time period when many companies fail that is generally referred to as “the valley of demise.”
The RIF hasn’t been funded since 2019, and Mitha stated he goals to vary that.
“We have gone 4 years with out cash into this program,” he stated. “That could be a massive, massive downside at a time after we’re spending extra {dollars} doing prototyping. We have to help extra firms to enter manufacturing and transition their applied sciences.”
Mitha stated he introduced the RIF again into his workplace to help streamlining entry factors into the protection market for small firms and to allow higher long-term planning for small enterprise applications. Just lately, Mitha advocated for permanency of the Mentor Protégé Program (MPP), which was a pilot for over thirty years. This led to Congress making MPP everlasting within the Fiscal Yr 2023 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act.
One other effort, Mitha stated, is the creation of what he stated known as the “Small Enterprise Integration Group.” Not each effort geared toward small enterprise growth lies in his personal workplace, he stated, however the brand new group will tie collectively the efforts occurring exterior his workplace.
“[It] will convey the providers, the protection businesses, OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], the economic base and small enterprise stakeholders to be a part of an built-in integration group that I’ll oversee … so we will collaborate higher, work nearer collectively, talk with business higher, and actually break down the silos between our applications,” he stated.
The Protection Acquisition College trains the acquisition workforce from throughout the division, and Mitha stated a brand new credential for working with small companies has been established inside DAU.
“We have now established frequent programs, curriculum and coaching for all these professionals,” he stated. “However we have made it a credential not a profession discipline. So, what meaning is that anyone within the acquisition workforce can get the small enterprise credential.”
Mitha stated he expects extra instructors and capability will likely be wanted to assist the hundreds of acquisition professionals throughout the division who could need to get the small enterprise credential.