SBA and Data Reporting

The SBA has always viewed increasing entrepreneurship as one of their primary strategic objectives. They hope to strengthen entrepreneurial ecosystems through a variety of strategic partnerships to provide tailored training, mentoring, and advising services that support entrepreneurs during their business growth. (FY16 1.3) Assessing quantitative data on the results of these programs has posed a problem for this organization for many years. The SBA acknowledged the problem in their FY 2016 Congressional Budget Justification, saying that the type of data they capture on small businesses and account information is restricted due to privacy concerns and statutory restrictions. (FY16 1.3)

Adequate reporting of data is not a new problem for the SBA. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that because longstanding organizational challenges have affected program oversight, the SBA has not documented an assessment of its overall organizational structure. (GAO 1) Such an assessment could help the SBA determine where they're going wrong internally, which in turn would help them more clearly report lending and borrowing data. A second GAO report determined that senior SBA leaders have not prioritized long-term organizational transformation in areas like information technology (IT). (GAO 2) Problems with technology make the SBA unlikely to have the means to report data in a cohesive manner. These problems have been identified by GAO and other organizations several times in the past, and yet the agency has made very limited progress in addressing most of their recommendations. (GAO 2)