When an agency's proposed goals are received they are manually typed into a spreadsheet which includes all the Federal agencies that negotiate goals with the SBA. This helps the SBA to determine if, in the aggregate, the government-wide statutorily mandated goals can be established.
The SBA then reviews each agency's individual goals proposed in each category and compares the proposed goals to both the agency's historical achievements and to the agency's historical proposed goals for the individual categories. These comparisons are necessary to see if the agency is truly proposing goals rather than a number that the agency knows it can achieve.
In addition, the agency's rationale, which is required to be provided with its proposed goals, is also reviewed to determine how an agency determined its proposed goals, and to see if the agency has proposed any significant changes from the previous years' goals due to programmatic or budgetary changes.
Information courtesy of the Small Business Administration.
