Creating a More Diverse and Resilient Federal Marketplace

The President’s Management Agenda (PMA), calls on agencies to create a diverse and resilient Federal marketplace. At a time when applications to start new small businesses in America are at an all-time high, it is imperative that the Federal marketplace leverage this small business growth in supply chains that support agency missions, reverse the significant decline of small business participation in the Federal supplier base over the last decade, and increase the share of Federal contract dollars awarded to small disadvantaged businesses to 15 percent by 2025, as called for by the President.

Building on OMB Memorandum M-22-03 released in 2021, the memorandum Creating a More Diverse and Resilient Federal Marketplace through Increased Participation of New and Recent Entrants  (M-23-11) establishes a common definition of “new entrant” for Federal acquisition, so agencies can baseline, track, and benchmark their progress in bringing entities into the Federal marketplace, as well as a common definition of “recent entrant,” so agencies can baseline, track, and benchmark how well they retain new entrants. This memorandum also provides guidance to agencies for using two newly developed tools: a supplier base dashboard to evaluate progress in achieving diversity and resilience in each agency’s supplier base, as well as an internal government procurement equity tool to help agencies identify entities that may be interested in participating in agency procurement competitions.