The Small Business Administration has launched a new website designed to simplify the application process for small companies and entrepreneurs that aim to do business with the federal government.

Maria Contreras-Sweet, SBA administrator, said in a statement released Tuesday the agency created the certify.sba.gov website to build on its ongoing programs such as LINC, the Start Up in a Day Initiative and the Small Business Tech Coalition.

“Small businesses often get too little credit for their work as our nation’s leading job-creators, generating nearly two out of three net new jobs in our economy,” Contreras-Sweet added.

She noted the agency included the Women-Owned Small Business program on the website in an effort to help address a market gap for female entrepreneurs.

The portal also features an “Am I Eligible?” tool that will work to help entrepreneurs determine their eligibility to participate in the WOSB Federal Contract, HUBZone and 8(a) Business Development programs, according to SBA.

Contreras-Sweet said the federal government awarded more than $90 billion in contract funds to small businesses during fiscal year 2015.

The Government Accountability Office has called on the Energy Department‘s National Nuclear Security Administration to specify the pit production-related parameter for NNSA’s plutonium analysis project at Los Alamos.

GAO said Tuesday the NNSA identified the requirements for the revised Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement project in order to obtain equipment for its plutonium analysis but failed to identify the capacity needed to produce a nuclear weapon pit.

“Not identifying this parameter likely contributed to the project potentially not providing sufficient analysis capacity to support planned pit production and may have contributed to different understandings among senior agency officials about how well the project will support pit production,” GAO noted.

GAO added that the revised CMRR project schedule and cost estimates did not meet the complete recommended practices that call for the maintenance of a schedule containing the necessary work activities.

NNSA limited the revised project’s schedule to near-term work that ends in 2017, the government watchdog observed, adding that NNSA must “develop a CMRR project schedule that includes all necessary work activities.”

The General Services Administration‘s 18F unit has conducted an experiment on an auction that involved bidding via the micro-purchase team’s application program interface on the cloud.gov platform.

Michael Torres and Alan deLevie, 18F acquisition management consultant, said in a blog post published Tuesday the auction used Amazon Web Services technology and saw an increase in bids from the usual five to seven bids to 70 bids with seven unique bidders including bots that bid against other competitors.

“Our hypothesis was that enabling bidding via API would actually increase activity in a way that would drive down the price of the auction, and bring in more people to participate,” the notice states.

The report added 74 percent of the bids came from bots that included the winning bid at $2,866, which was the second-highest recorded amount ever at the time.

18F noted the team works to add new features such as a bid time extension, time extension notifications to bidders and a small increment increase for automatic re-bids in a push to address the likelihood of someone getting out-bid a the last minute.

David Nelson, former chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been appointed to a similar role at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

He has managed CMS’ $2.6 billion information technology portfolio as well as helped facilitate efforts to fix the Healthcare.gov website and led the development of technology backbone for the Medicare claims processing system, NRS said Monday.

“David’s lengthy experience with the government’s use of information technology will help the NRC keep pace with today’s interconnected world,” said Victor McCree, operations executive director of NRC.

Nelson previously directed CMS’ information services and enterprise management offices as well as the data analytics and control group at the agency’s Center for Program Integrity.

He served in the U.S. Air Force and co-founded two broadband development firms before he joined CMS in 2004.