Federal Consulting Services Brief History – MOBIS
I talk to a lot of people and most people think the government marketplace is stagnate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s take a quick look at the Federal Market Place over the past 20 years. Under President Reagan during the height of the cold war the United States was spending approximately 40% of discretionary spending on the military and its hardware. After Regan left office and the peace dividend kicked in Defense Spending contracted and this percentage dropped to its current level of around 19% in the early to mid-1990s. Then on September 11th of 2001 the terror attack in New York City which greatly affected the Federal Government’s Defense Strategy moving forward. At that time data analytics/consulting/outside services represented approximately $130 Billion in Federal was needed. These new services gradually made their way into approximately all 60 Federal Agencies. By 2013 data analytics/consulting/outside services spending rose to $340 Billion dollars. As you can see from the end of Reagan’s term in 1989 to today what the federal government spends money on has changed radically.Discretionary spending. To answer the new terror threat more advanced and integrated data analysis
2001 | 2013 | |
Consulting Spending | $130 Billion | $340 billion |
Today if we look at the federal market place a large portion of these prime federal prime contractors got their start on the GSA MOBIS Schedule. The stats on that schedule are 1,358 Small Businesses on MOBIS and there are 715 large businesses on MOBIS. The contracting dollars from small business to small business varies greatly. I looked up on USASpending the first 300 small businesses on MOBIS, or approximately 20% of the small businesses on this schedule and looked at the amount of revenue these firms had over the past decade. 88% of these small businesses on MOBIS had Federal Revenue and the average revenue for these 300 firms was approximately $21 million over the period of the past 10 years, just over $2 million per firm. Taking into consideration that many of these firms are new to MOBIS this is a very large figure in my opinion.
The federal landscape is constantly changing and since 2001 it has been the age of the consultant. I don’t see this trend changing soon but this market will continue to