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need for technical assistance because projects are selected 

 primarily for their technical merit. However, they have 

 taken steps, independent of the provision, to provide 

 assistance with commercialization of research results. 



-- The duplicate funding of similar research has become a 



problem, especially with the increasing numbers of research 

 proposals submitted to the SBIR program. According to 

 agency officials, a few companies received funding for the 

 same proposals twice, three times, and even five times 

 before agencies became aware of the duplication. Several 

 factors are contributing to this problem, including (1) the 

 evasion of certification procedures whereby companies fail 

 to identify similar proposals to other agencies, (2) the 

 lack of a consensus on what constitutes a duplicate 

 proposal, and (3) the general lack of interagency access to 

 and exchange of current information about recent awards by 

 other agencies. 



BACKGROUND 



The Congress established the SBIR program in 1982 to stimulate 

 technological innovation, to use small business to meet federal R&D 

 needs, to foster and encourage participation by minority and 

 disadvantaged persons in technological innovation, and to increase 

 private sector commercialization of innovations derived from 

 federal R&D. 



Eleven federal agencies participate in the SBIR program. Five 

 of them--the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Aeronautics 

 and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Health and Human 

 Services and particularly its National Institutes of Health (NIH) , 

 the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation 



