The Small Business Administration is proposing changes to the Small Business Investment Company program that would diversify its network and introduce an alternative capital-raising structure to accommodate more types of investments.

SBA published the proposed SBIC Investment Diversification and Growth rule Wednesday in the Federal Register.

If approved, the reforms would open opportunities for new private funds and managers that provide longer-term debt and equity investments to marginalized startup companies and small businesses.

The rule is also intended to benefit capital-intensive industries and developers of critical national security technologies needing cash infusion.

SBA designed a substitute for the traditional Debenture SBIC borrowing structure to fit the cash flow patterns of the equity-oriented funds.

“SBA’s SBIC program has helped generations of entrepreneurs bridge capital gaps to build and scale resilient businesses. Despite the program’s impact, we still see underinvestment in communities across America, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to filling those capital gaps,” said Isabella Casillas Guzman, administrator of SBA.

“I look forward to working with our private investment partners and receiving important feedback to make this vital program even stronger.”

The investment diversification and growth proposal is open for public comment until Dec. 19.

President Biden on Tuesday signed a national security memo to support the execution of a strategy and implementation plan to counter biological threats, improve pandemic preparedness and achieve health security worldwide.

The National Biodefense Strategy seeks to detect pandemics and other biological threats by accelerating the development of new technologies and prevent outbreaks from becoming epidemics by strengthening laboratory biosafety and security and deterring the use and development of bioweapons, the White House said Tuesday.

The strategy aims to improve preparedness to respond to outbreaks and other biological incidents by facilitating testing within 12 hours, developing vaccines within 100 days and accelerating therapeutic development and validation to repurpose existing drugs within 90 days.

The White House said the memo seeks to improve the coordination of federal biodefense initiatives by directing agencies and departments to prioritize the strategy’s implementation in their annual budgets and requiring the Intelligence Community to track the evolving biothreat landscape and provide information needed to address various forms of biothreats.

The strategy outlines five goals to strengthen the biodefense enterprise: enabling risk awareness and detection to inform decision-making across the biodefense enterprise; ensuring biodefense enterprise capabilities to prevent bioincidents; ensuring biodefense enterprise preparedness to reduce the impacts of bioincidents; driving rapid response to limit the impacts of bioincidents; and facilitating recovery to restore the community, the economy, and the environment after a bioincident.

Each goal comes with specific objectives. For the first goal, the U.S. needs to ensure that risk assessments, intelligence and forecasting inform decision-making and that biosurveillance, biothreat detection and information systems are integrated and coordinated to detect, prevent and recover from bioincidents.

“The National Biodefense Strategy recognizes that domestic action alone is insufficient to protect America’s health and security in an interconnected world,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement published Wednesday.

“It directs greater international attention and focus, including expanding sustainable and transparent capacity building, improving country-led and adequately financed health security, as well as actions to prevent the acquisition and use of biological weapons,” added Blinken, a previous Wash100 Award winner.

The top two leaders of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Monday wrote a letter to the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy about a recent OSTP memorandum with regard to public access to results of federally funded research.

The letter was addressed to Arati Prabhakar, a previous Wash100 awardee who was confirmed by the Senate as director of OSTP in September.

In August, Alondra Nelson, then-acting OSTP director, released a memo urging federal agencies to update their policies no later than Dec. 31, 2025, to make results of federally funded research accessible to the public without an embargo.

House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Ranking Member Frank Lucas, R-Okla., cited the lack of details about the implementation of requirements in the memo, including how agencies will update their policies.

“We are further concerned about the lack of detail with respect to the requirements for digital data,” Johnson and Lucas wrote.

The lawmakers are asking OSTP to provide information on how it will work with agencies, universities, publishers and other stakeholders to ensure consistency and coordination in policies, develop new mechanisms for supporting peer review, page charges and data repositories to facilitate the transition to immediate public access and prevent the proliferation of multiple versions of peer-reviewed manuscripts.

The legislators also want to know about the steps OSTP plans to take to advance the implementation of data requirements in the memo and whether the office will develop guidance for federally funded research data not related to peer-reviewed scholarly publications and formalize a governmentwide definition for scientific data through rulemaking.

They also called on OSTP to conduct another round of public workshops and engagements with stakeholders to address implementation issues associated with the memo.

OSTP should submit its response to the letter no later than Oct. 31.