President Obama has set a deadline of President’s Day to get his $825 billion economic recovery bill passed so it is time to prepare how you are going to win stimulus package contracts.

According to a summary of the American Recovery and Investment Bill of 2009 investments will be targeted toward the following key areas:

• Energy – Objective is to double renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient (e.g. $16 billion will be spend repairing public housing to make them more energy efficient)
• Science & Technology – Help to make sure America keeps innovating by providing facilities, equipment and broadband internet access
• Infrastructure – Significant focus will be given to rebuilding roads, bridges and modernizing public buildings.  $30 billion dollars alone will be used for highway construction
• Education – Better classrooms, labs and libraries for America’s children so that they are better equipped to compete in the world economy
• Healthcare – Large investments in IT to computerize the healthcare system

Federal agencies will receive a good proportion of the money but billions will also find their way to state and local government agencies, presumably in the form of grants.  At the core of what the President is trying to achieve is to get money into the economic system so that it can find its way into the hands of small businesses.

If you run a small business you must now prepare yourself so that you are well placed to take advantage of President Obama’s strategy and win stimulus package contracts.  Here are 7 things you should be doing:

1. Make sure you are registered on the Central Contractor Registration database – you can’t be awarded a contract unless you are registered
2. Register also on the Small Business Dynamic Search as this is often where prime contractors will look to find small businesses to team with
3. Make sure you know your way around FedBizOpps – any federal contract over $25,000 will be published here
4. Consider whether you can attain any certifications.  There are a number of Federal small business certifications and many others at the state and local level for small, local and minority businesses.  Often contracts are set aside for businesses with relevant qualifications
5. Start teaming with experienced larger companies in your industry that already provide their products or services to government.  You can find out who those companies are by searching the FedSpending tool
6. Start proactively forming relationships with executives at federal, state and local agencies just like you would with any other prospect in a commercial company.  Don’t just wait for an RFP to be issued, even though it is government you are still selling to people and you need to network accordingly
7. Finally, think about how you can best position your business to win stimulus package contracts.  It may not be obvious at first how you can sell your product or service given the areas the Bill is targeting but it is more than likely you can.  Meet with government executives and discuss their needs so that you can start to best position and market your business

The economy is in recession and it will be for a while but government is booming.  There has never been a better time to focus your energy in this area.

I recently posted about FedSpending.org, a tool to use when you are looking for analysis on where the federal government spends its money.  Most, if not all, of the data relating to contracts comes from the Federal Procurement Data System or FPDS-NG.  The “NG” stands for “Next Generation”.  It’s kind of strange to still refer to the system this way given it has been open to the public since December 2004 although perhaps that is still next generation when you measure things in government years.

The FPDS is the central repository of information on federal contracting.  It is owned, controlled and run by the federal government.  While I suggest most of the time you look at FedSpending for your federal intelligence needs there may be occasions where you also need to search the FPDS.

In particular FPDS will provide you with slightly more up-to-date information on contracts.  FedSpending is only updated every 6 months so if you are looking for information on recent awards or contracts you will probably be better off navigating the less user friendly / search friendly FPDS.

One thing to note is that certain agencies within the federal government are exempt from reporting to the FPDS including, the US Postal Service, Congress (including the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service), the entire U.S. federal judicial court system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Federal Aviation Administration. The U.S. Mint and the Transportation Security Administration are not required to report to FPDS, but do so anyway.

Since the 1990’s the federal government has used the phrase “E-Government” with the objective of utilizing technology to improve how they serve citizens, businesses and other government agencies.  In 1999, Bill Clinton’s “Memorandum on E-Government” required the top 500 forms used by citizens to be placed online within a year.  Today, every one of the States has a website and the vast majority of counties and cities do too.

Surf over to your local county website and you are likely to find an E-Government section where you can do things like pay your property tax and water bill, renew your vehicle registration, search for certain records and find minutes of public meetings.  Notifications to bid for local, state and federal contracts appear mostly online now.  Long gone are the days when you had to search through local newspapers (although there are still a minority of agencies that still publicize their bids this way.)

But the use of technology in government is beginning to change.  Jon Lebkowsky recently posted some notes of a keynote given by Gary Chapman, the director of The 21st Century Project at a conference in Texas.  Gary discussed efforts at greater transparency in government at all levels and a transition from E-Government to a new term, “I-Government”.

Quoting directly from Jon’s notes, Gary described “a transition from e-government, which is merely transactional to i-government, or information based government.  Government shouldn’t just build PR web sites, it should be guarantor of data quality for access by tool builders. This is the next phase of democracy, and the next stage in the fight against corruption. We won’t need to file freedom of information access requests, because the information will already be online and accessible“.

Transitioning to I-Government must be the priority for our public sector.  Every government agency should have a strategy of how it is going to get its data in one place and provide access points so that developers can use their skills and create meaningful applications for the community.  This will create truly open and transparent government and tools will emerge that add real value to the community.  Too much of the discussion around the use of emerging technologies in government (often referred to as Gov 2.0) focuses on the adoption of social media and other collaborative tools within government agencies.  While I can’t deny the importance of these technologies I strongly believe that elected officials should be directing their IT departments to focus more of their energy on making information available.  They don’t need to build applications that make use of the data, our innovative developer community will do this for them.

In small part, we are beginning to see the emergence of I-Government and we have seen how powerful it can be in relation to government bidding.  In an earlier post, I introduced FedSpending.org a great website which has used spending data made accessible by the federal government and created a rich intelligence tool for the federal vendor community.

There is still a great deal of work to do at the local level but I look forward to PublicSpend showing how public spending data can provide a valuable intelligence tool that will enrich vendors and provide buyers, whether in the private or public sector, with information to make fast and optimal decisions.

Following on from yesterday’s post about how to find a federal bid I wanted to let you know about a free tool that provides fantastic intelligence.  Within a few clicks, FedSpending.org is able to tell you:

• what kind of annual spending levels the federal government has for the commodity or service you provide
• which federal agencies are buyers
• who the companies are (i.e. your competitors) that those agencies are buying from
• where in the country the work is performed

This information is actually public but difficult to access, aggregate and analyze.  FedSpending.org does the hard work for you by sourcing contract data from the Federal Procurement Data System.

As an example, I ran a search on contracts for pest control services and found that in 2007 the Federal Government spent $11.7 million on them.  I learned that this amount was split between 209 vendors (the contractor with the largest piece of the pie represented just over $1m) with the Army the largest buyer spending $3.7m.  In terms of geography where the contracts were performed, California, South Carolina and New York were the top 3 ranking states.  You are able to drill into each layer right down to the individual contracts where you are able to see who the Vendor is, when the contract was awarded and when it terminates.  I’ve put a couple of screen shots at the end of this post.

FedSpending.org was launched in October 2006 by OMB Watch, a non-profit group that promotes open government, accountability and citizen participation.  There are companies paying thousands of dollars each year for intelligence like this and FedSpending.org provides it all for free. I highly recommend you checking it out.