SBA

Riding what appears to be a growing groundswell of federal government innovation competitions, the Small Business Administration has awarded a first-place prize of $5,000 to a Silicon Valley software developer for a smartphone or tablet application that lets users quickly find loans, grants, permits and other useful resources for small businesses.

The winner of SBA’s “Apps for Entrepreneurs Challenge,” Somesh Kumar, is the founder of Mobispectra Technologies LLC, a Fremont, Calif., firm that creates applications for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The company’s aim is “to embrace innovation and take challenges to solve human problems with simplest technology,” according to its Web site. (The winning SBA app can be downloaded at “SBA Gems” at entrepreneurs.challenge.gov/submissions/5458. Keep reading →

When is a small business not a small business? When it’s a large business. Confused? So is Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

McCaskill thinks the classification standard used by the government to categorize businesses for statistical purposes “simply doesn’t make sense” when applied to the federal small-business contract-award process and wants to do something about it. Keep reading →

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski (pictured) has appointed David B. Robbins to be the FCC’s new managing director, effective September 12, 2011. He will succeed Steve VanRoekel, who left the agency earlier this year for a post at USAID before being named U.S. chief information officer earlier last month.

Robbins joins the FCC from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), where he served as associate administrator for the Office of Management & Administration, leading a number of the SBA’s core functions, including human capital management, facilities management, security, records management, executive secretariat, administrative services, and grants management, according to an FCC statement. He also served as director of the Loan Management and Accounting Systems Modernization Program. Keep reading →