Introduction
FedBizOpp is a short form for the tittle federal business opportunities. Owned by the federal Government, FedBizOpp assists in placement of government procurement prospects. However, one has to note that any procurement opportunity must exceed $25,000 in value for procurement on this website. The website does not only provide procurement opportunities, but also provides admittance to information on the same opportunities.
This website developed because of a goal set by the congress over 30 years ago (Obama, 2012, p. 4). The goal was to allot a fraction of the entire federal contracts to small business opportunities. That said this work discusses the reasons why FedBizOpp enhances opportunities for minorities, any possible improvements on the site, the elements considered when designing the website, and gives a detailed analysis of the services provided.
Reasons Why FedBizOpp Enhances Opportunities for Minority
FedBizOpp provides a platform for posting information about federal business opportunities to engineers and buyers. This allows other individuals to access the website. As stated above, there are reasons why FedBizOpp enhances opportunities for minorities. To begin with, the website provides free services. That is posting and access to information is gratis. A variety of websites record subscription charges for such services.
However, FedBizOpp has no subscription charges, which benefits the minority (Stretchgo, 2012, p.1). A second reason why FedBizOpp enhances opportunities for the minority is that it provides grounds for upcoming entrepreneurs. Individuals with entrepreneurial abilities at times lack the basis to begin their careers. They may possess the necessary skills but fail to win contracts from private firms. Thus, by providing grants and contracts to such people FedBizOpp is enhancing opportunities to the minority. Finally, the U.S. government restricts posting of any suspicious information on the website. One would ask whether such restrictions help the minority.
As a matter of fact, there are instances where inexperienced individuals have been lured and conned in other sites. The same inexperienced entrepreneurs are prone to similar cases of such websites. That said by ensuring posting of relevant opportunities, the government safeguards the minority. In fact, after acquiring the necessary experience from this site these individuals can start applying for contracts in other Websites.
The Design of FedBizOpp
Since the government had a goal of enhancing opportunities for the minority, various factors influenced the design of the website. These factors aimed at providing opportunities to the minority and lock out established individuals and firms. First, the Website required that Americans can access the website regardless of their physical location. To give a further explanation, Americans can access the Website regardless of their country of location. Global accessibility called for the use of a World Wide Web instead of an intranet. This technique allows access to the Website by all Americans as it is not compulsory for one to be in his/her home country.
Another key factor considered when designing the Website was simplicity. The government targeted both literate and illiterate Citizens, as a result, the Website called for a simple design. This owes to the fact that most of the minority population is illiterate. Thus, by simplifying the design of the website, the government ensured that even those individuals with little expertise about the internet, could easily browse the site. The third and final factor considered when designing the Website was accessibility. Snell (2007) states that when designing a Website, one should consider factors like slow internet connections, older browsers, handicapped users, among others.
That said FedBizOpp has sufficient equipment to counter such challenges. By using strong, reliable and secure servers, the Website is easily accessible even to slow internet connections. All the three reasons stated above influenced the design of FedBizOpp.
Projected Improvements on FedBizOpp
Although the Website serves Americans efficiently, there are various suggestions on how to improve the Website. First, by introducing live chat on the Website, the government helps even the most illiterate individuals. This will reduce on the margin of errors on the Website thus, improve the services on the site. Next, the idea of optimizing search engines should come into play. Search engine optimization attracts an increased number of visitors to the optimized site (Snell, 2007, p. 1).
Optimizing the search engines ensures the government that citizens have easy access to the Website. That said professionals hired to host the site has to ensure that FedBizOpp is maximally optimized. Finally, the third improvement on the site is displaying the most recent opportunities on the site. This is necessary because it will enable users to browse and pick on the opportunities of their choices easily.
Evaluation of services
To begin with, the government awards procurement opportunities and posts opportunities on the site. This information is available to a mass of the American population. To elucidate further, a tab of opportunities is close to log in icon on the website. This ensures that every citizen has an opportunity to browse any available opportunities because it is easily accessible. That is it does not demand a lot of effort to search for the available opportunities. The same Website provides a platform for users and vendors to make followups and also retrieve opportunities. It is not compulsory for users to be logged in for this service.
This makes the Website user friendly especially for those people who forget passwords easily (Stretchgo, 2012, p. 1). In as much as the site provides grounds for users to browse many opportunities, an increased number of viewers are necessary. This can be done by grouping the opportunities in their respective categories. A good example is grouping categories from one State together or by grouping similar types of opportunities together. The third and final service on the website provides information on the requirements of every contract. Any user can access the information of any given contract before applying for the same contract. This ensures that citizens apply for a contract only after evaluating their abilities. Thus, it cuts down on the number of unqualified applications.
Conclusion
In totality, FedBizOpp is a useful idea. This is because it targets at improving the lives of the minority by empowering them economically. Nonetheless, suggestions like optimizing search engines, using online live chat, and displaying the most recent opportunities, calls for further improvement. In addition, the world of technology is rapidly changing. As a result of these rapid changes, the site has to be constantly updated to maintain its efficiency. The initial target was to discuss the reasons why FedBizOpp enhances opportunities for minorities, any possible improvements on the site, the elements considered when designing the website and gives a detailed analysis of the services provided. That said this marks the end of this work.
References
Obama, B. (2012). Interagency Task Force on Federal Contracting Opportunities for Small Businesses. Web.
Snell, S. (2007). 21 Factors That Influence the First Impression of Your Website’s Visitors. Web.
Stretchgo. (2012). FedBizOpp: The Shortened Form of The Federal Business Opportunities. Web.