The Department of Homeland Security spends like a Fortune 10 company and buys almost everything: cybersecurity, screening technology, professional services, construction, medical supplies, aircraft maintenance, IT modernization. In FY2023 DHS obligated $9.9 billion to small businesses, the most in the department's history, and that came to 38.21% of total eligible contracting dollars. That number beat both the government-wide 23% goal and DHS's own 35.5% target. If you run a small or diverse business, DHS is one of the better federal customers to chase, because it routinely hits and exceeds its small-business goals instead of treating them as aspirational.
Here is how the pieces actually connect.
Start with registration, not the proposalYou cannot win a federal award over $25,000 without an active registration in SAM.gov, the System for Award Management. That is the single point of entry. Before you touch a DHS solicitation, you need three things in place:
- A Unique Entity ID (UEI), issued inside SAM.gov when you register (the DUNS number was retired in April 2022).
- An active SAM.gov registration with your NAICS codes selected. NAICS is what determines whether you count as "small" for a given contract, so pick the codes that match what DHS buys and what you actually do.
- Any socioeconomic certifications you qualify for, recorded in SAM and verified through SBA where required (8(a), HUBZone, WOSB/EDWOSB, and the SBA-verified SDVOSB status now run through SBA's certification systems, not self-certification on SAM alone).
If you are not sure which set-asides you can claim, our government readiness tool walks through the eligibility questions and flags the registrations you are missing. And if the certification paperwork itself is the bottleneck, CertifyAll handles federal certification applications so you are not assembling the same documents five times.
Meet the OSDBU before you meet a contracting officerDHS runs an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU). It is an advocacy and advisory office, not a buying office, so the OSDBU does not award you a contract. What it does is push small business into the DHS acquisition process and connect you to the people who do buy.
The OSDBU works alongside the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO), the department's Heads of Contracting Activities (the major buying components), and the small business specialists embedded in each component. That distinction matters. DHS is not one buyer. It is a federation of components: CBP, TSA, ICE, FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, CISA, USCIS, and the headquarters management offices. Each has its own mission and its own procurement shop. A vendor who sells screening hardware to TSA is calling on a different small business specialist than one selling disaster-response logistics to FEMA.
The practical move: identify the one or two components whose mission matches what you sell, then find that component's small business specialist through the OSDBU. That is a warmer path than cold-bidding solicitations you found that morning.
The set-asides DHS usesDHS contracts heavily through the standard federal set-aside programs, and it has the spend to back them up. The set-asides you will see on DHS solicitations:
8(a) Business Development
WOSB and EDWOSB
SDVOSB
HUBZone
You can dig into how this spending breaks down across agencies and business types in our federal spending database, which pulls obligation data straight from USASpending.gov.
Where DHS posts the work, including before it postsActive solicitations live on SAM.gov. That is where you find open opportunities, read the statement of work, and submit. But the higher-value move is to see the work coming.
DHS publishes its pipeline through the Acquisition Planning Forecast System (APFS), the department's annual forecast of anticipated contract opportunities. The forecast lists planned procurements, the responsible component, estimated value ranges, anticipated set-aside type, and points of contact, often months before anything posts on SAM.gov. Reading the APFS tells you which contracts are coming up for recompete, which are likely to be set aside for small business, and who to call now. A vendor who shows up after the solicitation drops is already behind one who started building the relationship when the forecast listed it.
Prime, subcontract, or bothMost diverse businesses do not win a large DHS prime contract first. The realistic sequence:
- Subcontract to an existing prime. DHS primes carry subcontracting plans with small-business and small-disadvantaged-business goals they have to report against. That is leverage. Find who holds the large DHS vehicles in your space and pitch them on the part of the work you can do, which helps them hit their own numbers.
- Win small set-aside primes. Use 8(a) sole-source or a HUBZone/WOSB/SDVOSB set-aside to land a first prime award you can point to as past performance.
- Grow onto the larger vehicles. DHS buys IT and professional services through governmentwide and department IDIQs; past performance from steps 1 and 2 is what makes you credible when those recompete.
Past performance is the currency. Every clean delivery, prime or sub, is something a contracting officer and your next teaming partner can verify.
A reasonable next stepBefore you write a capability statement or email a DHS small business specialist, confirm you are actually registration-ready and that you are claiming every set-aside you qualify for. Run our government readiness tool to see where you stand and what to fix first. It takes a few minutes and it is the cheapest way to find a gap before a contracting officer does.
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Sources: DHS OSDBU, DHS Small Business Goals and Achievements, About the OSDBU, DHS OSDBU Small Business Goals FY14-23 (PDF), SBA FY23 procurement scorecard.
