Federal Agencies / Federal agency guide
Department of Health and Human Services: $21.3B in contracts in FY2025
HHS is the largest civilian buyer of research and health IT: NIH, CDC, FDA, CMS, the Indian Health Service and BARDA each run their own contracting shops. The dollars go to clinical and laboratory research support, data systems that run Medicare and Medicaid, medical countermeasures, and the professional services that keep hundreds of programs reporting.
Its mission, in its own words
It is the mission of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to enhance and protect the health and well-being of all Americans. We fulfill that mission by providing for effective health and human services and fostering advances in medicine, public health, and social services.
As recorded on USAspending.gov; 24 sub-agencies and bureaus buy under it. www.hhs.gov
- Small-business set-asides
- $3.1B
Source: USAspending.gov, FY2025 contract obligations under a small-business set-aside, read 2026-11-05.
- Set-aside share
- 14.6%
Source: USAspending.gov, FY2025 set-aside obligations over all contract obligations, read 2026-11-05.
What HHS buys, by code
The NAICS codes with the most HHS contract dollars in FY2025: together $17.2B, 80.6% of everything it obligated. Each code links to its own page with the buyers under it across government.
| NAICS code | FY2025 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| $3.4B | 15.8% | |
| $1.9B | 8.9% | |
| $1.7B | 8.1% | |
| $1.4B | 6.7% | |
| $1.3B | 6.3% | |
| $1.2B | 5.9% | |
| $1.2B | 5.7% | |
| $1.1B | 5.2% | |
| $1B | 4.7% | |
| $876M | 4.1% | |
| $690M | 3.2% | |
| $575M | 2.7% | |
| $368M | 1.7% | |
| $305M | 1.4% |
Source: USAspending.gov, FY2025 contract obligations by NAICS code, read 2026-11-05.
The small-business share
$3,101,555,727 of HHS’s FY2025 contract dollars, 14.6% of the total, went out under a small-business set-aside: competitions and sole-source awards reserved for small firms, 8(a) participants, HUBZone, service-disabled veteran-owned and women-owned businesses. The dollars primes placed with small subcontractors sit on top of that and are not counted here.
Source: USAspending.gov, FY2025 set-aside obligations, read 2026-11-05.
The vehicles
NITAAC CIO-SP4 and its successors
NIH's governmentwide IT services vehicle, used across HHS and beyond.
CMS SPARC and ESD
The Medicare and Medicaid agency's systems vehicles.
BARDA BAAs and OTAs
Countermeasure research and production agreements with no fixed end product.
GSA MAS
Professional services, laboratory supplies and commercial IT.
What GovSmith does with this
How GovSmith wins at HHS for you
GovSmith tracks the NIH and CDC research support recompetes, the CMS modernization orders and the Indian Health Service's regional buys, matches them to a client's clinical, data or laboratory capability, and brings in the small-business specialists who shape the set-asides.