Information is key for any business to thrive, even more so for Small Business. I have near 20 years working with the federal government in the field of procurement. After fully understanding the utilization of the federal governments business marketplace FedBizOps, I noticed the massive need in the State to follow the lead of the federal government. The State has over 60 agencies that contract out services. The State has 24 Counties or equivalents and within each of those counties there is an average of 20 agencies that also contract out to businesses. Then across the state there are a total of 157 municipal governments who each have an average of 3 departments that also contract out work. When you calculate them all together, there are roughly 1,051 agencies across the state that need services from businesses. With all of those opportunities there is no central location to find all of them, making it difficult for small businesses to compete in the marketplace with large business.

 

MdBizOps

• My goal is to retool eMaryland Marketplace to Maryland Business Opportunities and have all agencies, counties, municipalities, hospitals, and state colleges and universities house all of their opportunities in this one centralized location for small businesses to have a greater shot at competing for work, which turns into jobs for our communities.   

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Small Business Set-Asides

• We all know that sometimes small businesses just cant handle every job. However, that doesn't mean they can't partner up with large business to get a piece of the work to one day grow into a larger operation. For large contracts, the federal government assures that a fair proportion of Government contracts in each industry category is placed with small business concerns. I will fight to have the State utilize the same federal model.

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