Small Business Research Programs: Better Data Could Improve Insight into Companies’ Success

Filed 8h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Eleven federal agencies issued $4.4 billion in Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer awards in fiscal 2024, split roughly evenly between ‘open topic’ awards where businesses pitch their own problems and ‘conventional’ awards addressing agency-defined needs. One program goal is pushing that funded research into actual commercial products.

GAO found small businesses submitted required commercialization reports for less than half of their prior awards from fiscal 2019 through 2024, largely because agencies don't consistently tell applicants about the reporting requirement or check whether they comply. Even with better compliance, the Small Business Administration says it wouldn't trust the data without outside validation, such as cross-checking IRS revenue figures.

GAO issued 14 recommendations, 13 to agencies on communicating and enforcing reporting requirements and one to SBA on pursuing legislative or other fixes to make the commercialization data reliable; all agencies agreed.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Four billion dollars a year going out the door and nobody can say with confidence whether half of it turned into anything is a strange way to run a program built around measuring success. It's like a co-op keeping careful books on the seed it sells and none at all on what actually came up in the field. Everyone agreeing with the recommendations is nice, but agreement doesn't plant anything either.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Hyperfun · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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