I’m Nancy Sternberg and I work for the Small Business Administration
and I manage the Business Gateway program which supports the Business.gov website.
There’s a lot of information across the federal government in a variety of websites
and it can be overwhelming to try and find that information.
So, at Business.gov we’ve tried to do our homework so you don’t have to.
We’ve pulled together information and we’ve added a very sophisticated search engine
that allows you to narrow the focus of what you’re looking for very quickly.
For example if you were doing a search on “taxes”
you’d be able to see very quickly a number of recommended websites to go to
We obviously are going to include the IRS
because that’s the predominant source of information on that topic.
But we’re also going to add additional places that you might want to check
if you’re doing some research on the topic of taxes.
We’re very excited
we recently launched the first
federally sponsored online community for small business.
And this is a real opportunity for the government
to start engaging further with the small business community.
This is a place where small business owners
can come and post questions, share their ideas,
and help other business owners.
And we’re really excited because it helps make sure
that information that may be shared with a business owner
is available now to a multitude of individuals at one time.
There are a variety of discussion forums
that are available on topics like “Starting A Business"
"Loans Grants and Taxes", as well as "Government Contracting."
We also have a series of news articles
that we update regularly on relevant and timely topics such as
“What is the federal government doing
to support the small business community
related to the Recovery Act?”
And there’s also a place for small business owners
to share their ideas on how we can better enhance
the community and the overall content on Business.gov.
We hope to become the single resource
the small business community can count on
for information at the federal, state and local level.
We also want to expand the number of
government subject matter experts that participate
in the community so that you can get greater access to your government.
And third, we want to start opening up the data
that we have behind Business.gov
so that interested individuals can use that data to make applications
are even more beneficial to the small business community.
I do this because there are 26 million small business owners
across the United States that make-up backbone of our economy.
And the Business.gov team is committed to making
it easier for businesses to do business.