For its ongoing comprehensive size standards review and future regulatory actions relating to size standards, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has developed a          “Size Standards Methodology White Paper,” explaining how it establishes, reviews and modifies its small business size standards pursuant to the Small Business Act (Act) and related legislative guidelines. Specifically, the white paper provides a brief review of the legal authority, early legislative history and regulatory history of small business size standards, a detailed description of evaluation of industry structure and program information and data sources; and concludes with a discussion of numerous policy issues regarding the objectives and direction of size standards. An appendix summarizes the detailed analytical steps involved in the evaluation of size standard for an industry.

SBA welcomes comments from the public on its methodology regarding a number of issues. SBA is aware that different choices among size standards can involve complex tradeoffs among relevant variables; SBA invites comments on how to identify and weigh those variables. Suggestions are invited on alternative methodologies for determining small businesses; on how these size standards affect competition in general and within the specific industry; on alternative or additional factors that SBA should consider; on whether SBA’s approach to small business size standards makes sense in the current economic environment; on whether SBA’s using anchor size standards is appropriate in the current economy; on whether there are gaps in SBA’s methodology because of the lack of comprehensive data; and on alternative datasets SBA should consider for a specific sector.

Please follow the instructions in the notice of the Federal Register for submitting comments to SBA.