Friday, July 1, 2022 by Samuel Stark
A disparity study designed to examine the effectiveness of Austin’s women’s and minority business enterprise procurement program found it to be largely successful. But while the program — aimed at creating more opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses — has been successful, the study also found that in Austin, women and minority-owned businesses still struggle.
The disparity study, initiated after the City Council passed a resolution in early 2020, was led by Colette Holt & Associates and took two years to complete.
“Looking at the hard data and having an outside consultant look at your program (and) saying, this really works well — I think that was one of the big takeaways for me,” Edward Campos, Austin director of Small and Minority Resources. Department, told the Austin Monitor. “Certainly, this does not mean that we are done conquering all the disparities that exist,” he added.
The study examined data from Austin contracts from 2013 to 2018. The researchers randomly selected 1,069 of all available city contracts and ultimately included 1,002 contracts in their analysis. Examples of these types of contracts would be agreements between the city and construction, architecture and engineering companies.
“While the city program (minority-owned and women-owned business) has been quite successful in creating opportunities for minority and women’s businesses, these benefits have not been distributed evenly across groups or sub-industries. We think the data as a whole support the conclusion that minority and female companies have not achieved parity in all aspects of the city’s local hiring activities compared to (white male-owned companies),” the study concluded.
Another aspect of the project involved researchers going out to the community and interviewing minority women and entrepreneurs about the specific challenges they face. Campos said the researchers found that “access to capital, access to bail and access to insurance…
To address some of the troubling findings, the consultant released some important recommendations. These recommendations, along with the results of the study, will be taken to the public and to the Small Business and MBE/WBE Procurement Program Advisory Committee to gather more information. Campos and his team will present recommendations for program improvement and ways to reduce business disparities to the City Council for adoption later this year.
The first iteration of the current business acquisition program for women and minorities was established by the City Council in 1987 in an effort to reduce discrimination and promote equal access to hiring opportunities. Since the original program was created, it has been revised and revised many times. The city tries to organize a disparity study to examine the program’s effectiveness every five years.
Photo made available under a Creative Commons license.
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