The Defense Information Systems Agency often relies on the small business community to assist in its mission to provide seamless communication services and cutting-edge IT to American war fighters and senior military officials across the globe. From cyber defense to cloud storage, small businesses offer flexibility and efficiency, often rendering them uniquely equipped to meet Department of Defense rapid capability demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That emphasis isn\u2019t new at DISA, where specific goals and requirements help spur the agency to fully embrace the innovation small businesses can offer. The Office of Small Business Programs functions as the principle advocate for small businesses within the agency, leveraging its position as the primary adviser to the director, senior leaders, workforce and industry on all aspects of programs \u201cto ensure the continuous growth of the small business industrial base that supports information technology products and services for the global war fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carlen Capenos took over as the director of the Office of Small Business Programs in August, as the office was coming off a strong fiscal 2018 \u2014 spending $1.72 billion and surpassing its small business goal of 28 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Capenos talked to C4ISRNET\u2019s Brandon Knapp about her plans to find areas for improvement and continuing the office\u2019s success \u2014 or, as she puts it, \u201cnot trying to fix what doesn\u2019t need to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: Share a little about your background and how it has equipped you for your new position as the director of Small Business Programs at DISA.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CARLEN CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> I have 22 years of federal service. I\u2019ve spent 17 of those in contracting, so I have a solid background in contracting. I\u2019ve worked for the Air Force, for the Army. And the last three years I\u2019ve worked for DISA. For the Corps of Engineers, I did a job for a couple of years for the construction industry. I think all those things rolled together allow me to have a good solid basis for being this director and helping DISA and its mission, as well as the small businesses in our industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: Why is it important for DISA to have a good relationship with the small business community?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> The first thing is that it\u2019s the law. So, to be compliant, we\u2019re going to do it. But it behooves us to do it well. And it behooves us to have the relationships with industry to help us when we need help and support them when they need support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But really the bottom line of our goal is to deliver what our war fighters need. And a lot of times the small businesses can do it and will do it. That allows us to meet our statutory goals and law-based requirements, but really when they have the best answer and can get us a solution quickest \u2014 that\u2019s the real priority for us to have the relationships with the small businesses. Because in the end, it is all about the war fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What are you particularly excited about at DISA in the next year or so?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> I\u2019m super excited about SETI, our systems engineering, technology and innovation requirement. So much of the focus of that contract really was about bringing innovative small businesses to DISA. As we were working toward that request for proposals we asked, \u201cHow can we remove barriers to get those innovative small businesses to come to us and want to work with us?\u201d And we developed SETI around that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my new role, I still want to have an active part in getting those small businesses into DISA to figure out what DISA\u2019s main innovative challenges are and to set up a forum that works for DISA and for industry. Whether it\u2019s through the SETI vehicle or through our [other transaction authority] process or any other way that can be advantageous for small businesses, for DISA and, most importantly, the war fighter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: How do you see the Office of Small Business Programs\u2019 role externally in working with these businesses?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> We need to be the advocates for the small business. We spend a lot of time meeting individually with small businesses. We do a monthly group meeting with small businesses that are either new to federal contracting or new to DISA, so we can show them how we\u2019re organized, how we execute contracts, programs that we have upcoming, and a lot about how to find information and where to get information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What about advocating for the small business community within DISA?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> We also teach internally. We teach our contracting folks. We work with them on doing market research and we work with them on their acquisition strategies: Should we set this aside for small business? Should we not set this aside? If we\u2019re going to set it aside, can we hit one of the other federally designated categories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because we report directly to the commander, we also are leadership\u2019s eyes and ears for small business. We apprise them of where we are, where we\u2019re going \u2026 any issues, concerns. Once contracts are awarded, we also can be involved if there are issues with performance, to help improve performance or to see what we can do to facilitate corrective actions. We do whatever\u2019s necessary to make sure that small businesses have a voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What aspects of the IT community are challenging for small businesses?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> The issues that we\u2019re starting to see for small businesses, though it hasn\u2019t really come directly to us at DISA, include the fact that the requirements for all the cybersecurity can be very expensive. There have been some questions about whether the government is doing anything for the industry to help out with all those requirements. I think the cost of doing business with the federal government \u2014 to keep our data and networks safe and secure \u2014 is a challenge for small businesses when trying to meet all the requirements and pay for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What unique advantages do small businesses bring to the table in the IT space?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> What I would say is very desirable with the small business side is they\u2019re generally the ones that spur the innovation and have the solutions to the problems that we have, or problems that we don\u2019t know we have yet. It\u2019s on us as an agency to facilitate a way for nontraditional companies to get into the federal government. It\u2019s on us to clear out the red tape, to remove some of the requirements and to figure out how we best make it easy to do business with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What can small businesses do to improve their ongoing relationship with DISA?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> The biggest thing they can do is respond to our sources-sought notices. When we post stuff out there saying, \u201cHey, small business can you do this? Do you want to do this? How can you help us with that?\u201d That\u2019s a really great step to indicate that they can do the work we have and they want to do the work we have. And then engaging with our events; for instance, Forecast to Industry days to hear about what DISA is doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: Are there any areas of small business contracting where you think DISA has room for improvement? For example, the previous director of Small Business pointed to HUBZone small businesses as an area that needed to improve.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> The good news is that we met all our goals for our socio-economic categories this year, so we don\u2019t have to focus on a specific area. We can really look at how can we get the best small businesses \u2014 whether they are HUBZone, service-disabled veteran-owned, women-owned, or just plain small business. Or if it\u2019s something that\u2019s not suited for them, then we have to make sure that on the other circuit stuff that we have solid subcontracting goals and evaluating participation plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: What are you doing to reach out to industry and to get better acquainted with their concerns on an individual level?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> One thing that we\u2019re working on is putting together a small SurveyMonkey questionnaire for industry, large and small, to ask what this office is doing well that we should continue to do and what we are doing that we shouldn\u2019t be doing. But, most importantly, what we are doing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: How do you see the future of small businesses as potential prime contractors. Is that an area you see as having a viable future?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> Absolutely. When we\u2019re looking at the increase of the DoD\u2019s budget, that means that we can do more, and we\u2019ve seen that this year in four of our five categories. We\u2019ve executed and obligated more dollars for each of those categories than we have ever at DISA. And some of that is because we know small business can do this work, so we\u2019re setting more things aside. But with the increase in the dollar value it means there is more things we can do to execute programs now instead of later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DISA and our small businesses have shown historically that they can do it. So, it\u2019s not hard to twist the arms of program managers to say, \u201cYeah, this one small businesses can do.\u201d The good news is we have that history and we have that support from leadership top down. DISA considers every requirement for small business first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: In your view, is the small business community adapting in ways that make them more attractive to DISA or are you seeing stagnation?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS: <\/b><\/i>The challenge is really for DISA to keep up with small business. We need to learn how to be more flexible and less stagnant on how we approach small business, how we get them under contract, how we utilize [other transaction authorities] and those are things that we are working on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really think they have what we need, we just need to find the avenues to get them under contract, find the right pots of money, that kind of stuff. I think with these healthy DoD budgets, that\u2019s good for everybody \u2014 most importantly the war fighter \u2014 that those problems will be quickly solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
C4ISRNET: The Department of Defense is receiving record levels of funding from Congress. How do you expect this healthy budget to affect the Office of Small Business Programs and what does it mean for small businesses?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
CAPENOS:<\/b><\/i> The increase in the DoD budget is good news for DISA and for [the Office of] Small Business Programs. We saw record dollar amounts awarded in four of the five federally designated categories in fiscal year 2018. We expect this to continue. Bigger budgets mean more requirements can be executed \u2014 and with DISA\u2019s small business-first policy, that means more opportunities available. For the requirements that aren\u2019t well-suited for small businesses to prime, it\u2019s still good news \u2014 there will be more opportunities for subcontracting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carlen Capenos, the new director of the Defense Information Systems Agency\u2019s Office of Small Business Programs, on reinforcing relationships to benefit the war fighter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":110,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,110,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1078],"class_list":["post-18862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-it-cloud-report","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JFLCBNKDOFDGBJJA2YVBMKPH6Y","arc_canonical_url":"\/show-reporter\/disa-forecast-industry\/2018\/11\/05\/advocating-for-innovation\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n