Federal Agencies Lack Data to Track Small Business Research Awards
By Legis1 Editorial, edited by Joanne Levine
Friday, October 2, 2026 • 3 min read
Why It Matters
Federal agencies issued $4.4 billion in small-business research awards in fiscal 2024, but incomplete data leave them unable to fully assess whether those investments are producing commercial results, according to Small Business Research Programs: Better Data Could Improve Insight into Companies' Success, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published September 29. Small businesses submitted required commercialization data for less than half of their prior awards, limiting lawmakers' and agencies' ability to evaluate the programs' economic outcomes.
The Big Picture
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs were designed in part to drive economic growth by helping small companies that might otherwise struggle to secure capital for research and development, with 11 federal agencies participating and the Small Business Administration (SBA) overseeing the programs, issuing guidance, and reporting to Congress. In fiscal 2024, those 11 agencies issued $4.4 billion in SBIR and STTR awards, split almost equally between "open topics," where agencies define broad areas of interest, and "conventional topics," where agencies specify the problems they want solved. Open-topic funding has produced innovations such as space vehicles that repair satellites, illustrating the potential benefits of giving small businesses greater latitude to define problems and solutions.
Congress began requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to release open-topic solicitations in fiscal 2023, and the SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022, in connection with that requirement, included a provision for GAO to review open topics in the programs, with this report being the fourth in that series.
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At a Glance
- Key Findings: Federal agencies lack comprehensive data to track small business research awards, hindering their ability to assess the economic outcomes of these investments.
- Report Coverage: GAO analyzed data from all 11 participating agencies and SBA covering more than 6,000 awards issued in fiscal 2024 and examined the commercialization database for awards from fiscal 2019 through fiscal 2024.
- Recommendations: GAO made 14 recommendations to improve data collection and communication among agencies and small businesses. All recommendations are listed as open.
Broader Context
Even if compliance improved, SBA officials said they would not consider the commercialization data sufficiently reliable without validation and verification. They identified options to increase reliability, including incorporating data from other sources or obtaining additional resources to validate submissions. Statutory changes would be needed to change what commercialization data SBA collects. Reliable data could give decision makers clearer insight into outcomes for open- and conventional-topic awards and the overall economic return on federal research and development investment.