Mentor-Protege Programs Have Policies That Aim to Benefit Participants but Do Not Require Postagreement Tracking

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A mentor-protege program is an arrangement in which mentors--businesses, typically experienced prime contractors--provide technical, managerial, and other business development assistance to eligible small businesses, or protege. In return, the programs provide incentives for mentor participation, such as credit toward subcontracting goals, additional evaluation points toward the awarding of contracts, an annual award to the mentor providing the most effective developmental support to a protege, and in some cases, cost reimbursement. Overall, mentor-protege programs seek to enhance the ability of small businesses to compete more successfully for federal government contracts by furnishing them with assistance to improve their performance. We identified 13 federal agencies that currently have mentor-protege programs including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of State (DOS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Small Business Administration (SBA), Department of the Treasury (Treasury), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 required that we conduct a study on federal mentor-protege programs to determine whether they are effectively supporting the goal of increasing small business participation in federal government contracting. This letter summarizes a March 2011 briefing we provided to congressional staff on the results of this work. It also includes updated information on the number of active mentor-protege agreements reported by each agency as of March 2011 and additional audit work we conducted following the briefing on protege postcompletion information. Our objectives were to (1) describe the policies and procedures for administering and monitoring federal mentor-protege programs; (2) identify controls used to help ensure that mentor-protege programs are beneficial to program participants and eligibility requirements are being met; and (3) determine if information is available on whether proteges have become able to compete for federal contracts without the assistance of a mentor.