Over the past three years, business owners and entrepreneurs have told us that they don’t have the time or resources to navigate the maze of government agencies and need a one stop shop where they could go for all the assistance they need at every stage of their development. As President Obama said in his State of the Union address last month, we need to give U.S. businesses every opportunity and tool to succeed and not a maze to navigate. And as Secretary Bryson has said multiple times while traveling to manufacturers in Columbus, Norfolk, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis, we need to support American businesses so they can build their products here in America and sell them everywhere around the world.
This is why the Obama Administration is launching a new online platform, BusinessUSA, to help small businesses and exporters of all sizes find information about available federal programs without having to waste time and resources navigating the federal bureaucracy. BusinessUSA combines information and services from 10 different government agencies through one consolidated website and coordinate telephone support through a single 1-800 number. The BusinessUSA website went live today with hundreds of business resources consolidated in one place including Commerce’s International Trade Agency, Census Bureau, Patent and Trademark Office, several other Commerce bureaus, as well as, multiple other government agencies.
BusinessUSA is a platform to make it easier than ever for businesses to access services to help them grow and hire from the day they need technical assistance to start a business, to the day they start building a product and need financing, to the day they are ready to export and need help breaking into new markets overseas.
It’s a “No Wrong Door” approach for small businesses and exporters, creating a common platform to match businesses with the services relevant to them, regardless of where the information is located or which agency’s website, call center, or office they go to for help. And as more federal agencies publish content through web services, the more we will be able to highlight the most relevant information and programs from across the government.
To ensure that it is designed with the customer in mind, BusinessUSA was built with the active feedback of U.S. businesses and relevant online communities and, to the extent possible, and we are encouraging businesses to continue giving us feedback that we will incorporate as we refine the site. The BusinessUSA website provides an easy-to-use mechanism to provide feedback directly to us and we will use that information to make the site even better. For example, as we move forward, we will integrate related state and local government services, as well as those of private sector partners.
The President has laid out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last – an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values. We need to make sure that today’s business leaders and tomorrow’s innovators can get the information they need to start or grow a business, export to other markets, or learn about the latest contracting opportunities. BusinessUSA is one of the steps the Administration is taking to realize the President’s vision of a streamlined government that serves the 21st Century economy.
