In April 2020, the Small Business Administration (SBA) moved quickly to implement the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provides loans that are forgivable under certain circumstances to small businesses affected by COVID-19. Given the immediate need for these loans, SBA worked to streamline the program so that lenders could begin distributing these funds as soon as possible. For example, l

This supplement is a companion to GAO's report entitled Disaster Assistance: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (GAO-20-503). The purpose of this supplement is to present additional analysis of applicant data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Individuals and Households Program (IHP) for the following disasters that occurred during

In fiscal year 2019, many agencies that participate in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs were not consistently on time in notifying awardees or issuing awards, similar to fiscal years 2016 through 2018, which GAO previously reviewed. For notification, 15 of the 29 participating agencies met the timeliness requirement (90 calendar

From 2016 through 2018, 5.6 million people applied for disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and 4.4 million were referred to the Individuals and Households Program (IHP) for assistance. For eligible survivors, FEMA's IHP can offer financial assistance—including money for personal property losses and repair of certain home damages. The IHP may also provide ren

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offers multiple programs that help small businesses and inventors with acquiring intellectual property protections, which can help protect creative works or ideas. These programs, such as the Inventors Assistance Center, are aimed at assisting the public, especially small businesses and inventors, with intellectual property protections. Several stakeho

The approach followed by the Social Security Administration (SSA) in awarding and overseeing contracts generally aligns with the requirements GAO reviewed. For the 27 contracts and orders GAO reviewed, SSA varied its approach depending on the contract type used and the dollar value. For example, one of SSA's written acquisition plans acknowledged the risks to the government associated with time-a

In response to the national public health and economic threats caused by COVID-19, four relief laws making appropriations of about $2.6 trillion had been enacted as of July 31, 2020. Overall, federal obligations and expenditures government-wide of these COVID-19 relief funds totaled $1.5 trillion and $1.3 trillion, respectively, as of June 30, 2020. GAO also obtained preliminary data for six majo

Selected agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, Indian Health Services, and Small Business Administration—had generally deployed tools intended to provide cybersecurity data to support the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. As depicted in the figure, the program relies on automated tools to identify hardware and software residin

The Small Business Administration (SBA) does not maintain complete documentation to support data on the activities of procurement center representatives (PCR), which is information used to oversee PCRs and assess their performance. PCRs are responsible for helping small businesses gain access to federal contracting and subcontracting opportunities—for example, by making set-aside recommendation

GAO found selected agencies did not consistently follow all required procedures for oversight of small business subcontracting plans, both before and after contracts were awarded. GAO reviewed 26 contracts with a subcontracting plan at four agencies—Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), General Services Administration (GSA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of