Public Testimony
Small Business Participation
in the
Federal Procurement Marketplace
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Small Business
Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Chair
March 24th, 2010
By
Raul Espinosa
President/CEO, FitNet
Founder, Fairness in Procurement Alliance (FPA)
Testifying on behalf of
The Fairness in Procurement Alliance (FPA)
The FPA Think Tank at UNF
plus a coalition of small and disadvantaged business groups
669 Treehouse Circle
Saint Augustine, FL 32095
Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Graves, distinguished members of the House Small Business Committee.
Thank you for permitting me to file this testimony containing specific recommendations aimed at eliminating
barriers against small and disadvantaged businesses in government contracting.
My name is Raul Espinosa and I am a seasoned government contractor with more than 30 years of public
contracting experience. I am the CEO of FitNet, a government purchasing group and the Founder of The
Fairness in Procurement Alliance (FPA), a national coalition of organizations representing the procurement
interests of 10 million small and disadvantaged businesses. Our organization co‐founded a procurement Think
Tank at the University of North Florida (UNF) devoted to researching solutions to make sure small and
disadvantaged businesses will receive “maximum practicable utilization” or MPU in government contracting as
mandated by P.L. 95‐507.
A 2008 RAND study of DoD contracting practices with small businesses had confirmed the existence of a
‘culture barrier' which had prevented small and disadvantaged businesses from openly participating in
government contracting the way Congress intended. Although the RAND study did not identify the barriers on
their study, the FPA Think Tank at UNF researched and incorporated the subject into The Umbrella Initiative,
to identify such barriers and to show how they contributed to what the Think Tank has