Critical finding: 34% of respondents report serious upload problems preceding January 15, 2003

Survey to close at 5PM Eastern: Monday, February 24, 2003

Several hundred firms on all sides of this issue and in most states, have completed the Survey on this site. Carefully designed specifically to provide factual data con- cerning the form and extent of the problems which occurred surrounding upload of proposals to the DOD SBIR 2003.1 solicitation, the Survey has met that objective well.     Analysis of the findings is now under- way with the results being provided to the primary decision makers in this effort as well as being posted here.

Survey Instrument is still available to view. However, to enable analysis of the data in the time-framework driven by the Bid Protest process, the Survey is now closed.

• to keep abreast of developments surrounding the reported difficulties experienced by many firms in achieving upload of their proposals submissions to the DOD 2003.1 SBIR solicitation on or before January 15, 2003
• and to provide their input in various ways into determining what happened and - very importantly - how to fix this.

Following the reported problems of January 15, a number of affected firms - initially THREE, then FIVE and now EIGHT - filed formal Bid Protests with the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). When GAO agreed to accept those first three original protests (filed within ten days, as required, from the closing date of the challenged event) the effect was to put the DOD 2003.1 solicitation into a condition of Automatic Stay -- in essence, no activity can be taken by DOD on this solicitation and/or on the 7200 proposals already in hand, unless and until EITHER the matter is resolved and the Bid Protests withdrawn OR the GAO has completed their investigation.

The adverse impact of this present situation is potentially substantial - see Possible impact of an extended delay? As long-time SBIR advocates, we were inevitably drawn into the matter of how to deal with this. Allowing this situation to continue for any extended length of time is in no-one's best interests.

Survey Instrument:
To get passed the he said-she said condition into which this matter was rapidly deteriorating, with a number of others the decision was made quickly to construct a carefully designed Survey Instrument which would enable the compilation of data to determine the form and the extent of the problem.

Who are involved:
From our comprehensive in-house SBIR-STTR Awardee databases, we profiled current awardees which our judgment suggested were likely to have been applicant into the DOD 2003.1 SBIR solicitation. This yielded an email listing of about 3500 in-firm contacts. Our databases, by definition, are Awardees based. We do not have data on firms which are first-time SBIR applicants. To ensure that those firms were represented, contact was made to about 400 organizations and individuals in the states which are in the business of providing SBIR support services. At our request, many of them contacted firms with which they had worked in preceding weeks to make them aware of the Survey and to urge their participation.

The result has been a steady flow - which continues - of firms applicant to the DOD 2003.1 solicitation. The greater percentage of respondents were successful in their upload. Importantly, some of our initial hypotheses about who had been affected, when their problems occurred and why proved to be unsubstantiated. Perhaps the most important findings - somewhat unexpected have been that many firms are reporting problems as early as late December and the early days of January. There is no question that these findings are playing an important role in achieving timely resolution to this matter.