Research
The evidence, and where it comes from
We measure the federal marketplace ourselves — from the government's own procurement data, by a published method, with the code open to anyone who wants to check it. The Federal Marketplace Index™ is the evidence base under every filing on this site.
$3.45T
Federal contract dollars measured and reconciled
FY2022–FY2026
3.6%
Of small-business dollars the mandatory Rule of Two still reaches
FY2022–FY2026
56,728
Small businesses winning federal contracts, down from 62,862
FY2022→FY2025 · Fell every complete year
What we measure
The Federal Marketplace Index
Measured. Reconciled. Public.
The Index tracks where federal contract dollars actually flow, how far the mandatory small-business protections actually reach, and which way both are trending. It is built from roughly 30 million public contract records, reconciled against the government's own published totals, and updated quarterly. It takes no position favouring any program, category, channel, or firm, and it is built to permit unflattering findings.
Source USAspending (FPDS) · FY2022–FY2026 · Reconciled to SBA goaling
The method
How every figure is built
The sources, the definitions, the thresholds, and the reconciliation against the government's published totals — including the places where the two do not agree, and why. Where a gap cannot be closed from public data, it is catalogued as a limit rather than smoothed away.
Read the methodology →The data
Every table, downloadable
Every table behind every chart, in open formats, with no login. The analysis code is public, each release is archived at a citable DOI, and the data is licensed for reuse — so any figure can be rebuilt, or challenged, from the same source we used.
Download the data →The record
Every change, dated
Every data update, method change, and correction is recorded in public, permanently. Corrections are dated and never made silently. It is the plainest test of whether a research programme is what it says it is.
See the changelog →Why we measure
Measurement is the first half of the argument
A measurement that stays on a website changes nothing. The Index exists because we file — and a comment carries further when it arrives with the arithmetic attached, in a form the agency can check line by line. These are the filings built on it.
Filed
2026-07-09
Principal comment on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul — Parts 5, 6, 7, and 10
Sixteen pages on what the rewrite does to the front door of the federal marketplace, grounded in the Index's reproducible analysis of roughly 30 million contract actions across FY2022–FY2026.
Filed
2026-07-09
Comment under 5 U.S.C. § 610 — the protections the overhaul removes without counting
The FAR Council invited small entities to comment on the existing regulations the overhaul would remove. We accepted, and counted — from the government's own data — what the Council's own analysis did not.
Filed
2026-08-07
Comment on the 2027 NAICS revision — held to OMB's own standard
OMB proposed consolidating forty-six industries into eighteen. Tested against per-code federal contract measures published as a citable data deposit, so the agency can rerun every number in the comment itself.
And what it actually means
A goal met by fewer firms
In FY2024 the government awarded 28.8 percent of its contract dollars to small businesses, comfortably ahead of the 23 percent goal. Over the same period, the number of small businesses actually winning federal work fell every complete year.
Both things are true, and only one of them is reported. A goal stated in dollars can be met by a shrinking number of firms — larger awards to fewer companies clear the target just as well as broad participation does.
That is why we measure firms as well as dollars, and why the filings on this site argue about the supplier base rather than the percentage. Interpretation is the part that does not come out of the data on its own.
Goal figure: SBA Small Business Reporting Scorecard FY2024
See the charts behind these figures →Who pays for this
Members pay for the measuring
Dues, events and capped sponsorships fund the Index, the filings built on it, and the summits where suppliers meet the people buying. We accept no large sponsorships and no political money — so nobody who supports this work writes a check large enough to change what the data says, or what we file.