The 2020 Baseline
The study Boston already has, and what it obligates the next one to do
In 2020 the City retained BBC Research & Consulting to measure whether minority- and woman-owned businesses won City work in proportion to their availability. The answer was no: an overall disparity index of 65, and 12 for Black American-owned firms. The City acted on those findings. The update is not a blank page; it is a before-and-after study of a reform era, and it should be held to the baseline's own standard.
2020 City of Boston Disparity Study, BBC Research & Consulting, published February 2021. Read the full report.
What BBC found
Availability 16.9 percent. Utilization 11.0 percent. Index 65.
BBC's custom-census availability measured the share of contract dollars MWBE firms were ready, willing, and able to perform; utilization measured what they actually received, certified or not. The disparity index divides one by the other. Under 80 is the conventional threshold for a substantial disparity.
Availability vs utilization by group, all contracts
Dollar-weighted, FY2015-FY2019
Source: 2020 City of Boston Disparity Study, figures ES-1 and ES-4.
Official disparity indices
All City contracts and procurements. Under 80 = substantial.
- Non-Hispanic white woman-owned76
- Asian American-owned141
- Black American-owned12
- Hispanic American-owned70
- Native American-owned100
- Total minority-owned44
- Total minority- and woman-owned65
Source: Figure ES-7; prime and subcontract detail in figures ES-8 and F-12/F-13.
Group by industry
Where the 2020 disparities concentrated
BBC's own availability and utilization by industry, expressed here on the 0-1 index scale used throughout this portal (BBC prints the same ratio times 100). Construction, at 0.34 combined, carried the deepest disparity; goods and supplies sat at parity.
2020 disparity indices by group and industry
0-1 scale; below 0.80 flags a substantial disparity
| Group \ Industry cluster | Construction | Construction design | Other professional services | Support services | Goods and supplies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-Hispanic white woman-owned | 0.37 | 1.82 | 0.34 | 0.95 | 1.51 |
| Asian American-owned | 0.27 | 1.57 | 32.00 | 0.29 | 5.00 |
| Black American-owned | 0.15 | 0.28 | 0.01 | 0.38 | 0.07 |
| Hispanic American-owned | 0.25 | 1.19 | 5.00 | 0.83 | 1.17 |
| Native American-owned | 3.00 | — | 0.00 | — | 0.00 |
| All minority | 0.24 | 0.93 | 0.97 | 0.42 | 0.19 |
| All MWBE | 0.34 | 1.42 | 0.66 | 0.67 | 1.03 |
Source: Computed from the 2020 study's figures ES-3 (availability) and ES-6 (utilization); index = utilization ÷ availability.
What the City did next
The reform era the update must evaluate
The 2020 study did not sit on a shelf. Its aftermath is a series of concrete, dateable interventions, which means the update can and should be designed as an evaluation: which interventions moved participation, for whom, and through which channel.
- Feb 2021
Executive Order: citywide goals of 25% MWBE combined (15% WBE / 10% MBE) of discretionary spending; annual tracking from FY23; departmental equitable procurement plans.
- Aug 2022
Sheltered Market Program adopted under M.G.L. c. 30B s.18: designated contracts open only to certified disadvantaged vendors.
- FY2023
City reports contract awards to certified diverse suppliers reaching roughly 15 percent.
- Jun 2026
Executive Order extends the goals and mandates this updated disparity study (RFP EV00017483).
Certified-MWBE share of discretionary spending since the study
Computed from 1,064,059 payment lines of City open data, FY19-FY26 Q3
Source: City of Boston discretionary-spending open data (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2026-07-28. Certified-only shares are a floor on true MWBE participation; the 2020 study counted firms certified or not. Benchmarks: 16.9 percent (2020 availability), 25 percent (EO goal).
A close read
What the 2020 methodology did well, and where the update must go further
This review is built from the study's own text and is offered with respect: the 2020 study measured participation certified or not, weighted availability by dollars through a custom census, engaged more than 570 businesses, and formalized its chance testing. Those were the field's strong conventions. The frontier has moved, and the legal climate has hardened. Each finding below states what the record shows and the standard the update should be held to.
Significance was tested for two contract sets, not the full grid
The Monte Carlo analysis ran on all contracts combined and on construction. The per-industry findings, the prime and subcontract splits, and most group-level cells carry no significance test. Remedies now operate industry by industry; the update must publish a per-group, per-industry significance grid with multiple-comparison discipline.
The chance model assumes every firm is equally likely to win
The simulation gave each available business identical odds on every contract element. Rejecting that null shows awarding is not random; it cannot separate discrimination from legitimate non-random factors like size, experience, or price. The update needs tests that condition on legitimate award determinants, so the residual means something.
Availability was never capacity-adjusted
A one-person firm and a five-hundred-person firm count identically within a field. The study's own legal appendix rehearses the case law where that choice draws fire. The update should measure capacity explicitly and publish capacity-annotated availability alongside the unadjusted series, letting the two bracket the truth.
The survey's defensibility is asserted, not documented
The 703-page report states no response rate, no nonresponse-bias analysis beyond a qualitative argument, and no confidence interval on any availability estimate. The 16.9 percent figure that anchors the City's goals is a point estimate without stated uncertainty. The update should publish instrument, dispositions, response rates by stratum, weights, and intervals.
No causal analysis ran on the City's own contracting data
Regressions in the study analyze national Census data on marketplace conditions. On the City's own 47,000 contracts, the analysis computes shares and indices and stops: no solicitation-to-award funnel, no award-probability modeling, no decomposition of explained versus unexplained differences. The update's core work is exactly that missing layer.
The anecdotal record leans on the permission not to verify
The legal appendix correctly notes courts accept unverified anecdotes. The strongest modern records verify, attribute, and retain anyway, because that is what survives a hostile expert. The update should match the 2020 engagement scale with a verified, attributed, retained protocol.
The data were stale before the programs built on them began
FY2015-FY2019 data, a February 2021 report, and programs adopted 2021-2022 mean today's race-conscious instruments rest on a pre-COVID record. Not a flaw of the work; a flaw of the cycle. The update should rebuild every 2020 cell on FY21-FY25 data and leave the City a pipeline that keeps the baseline current annually.
Nothing is reproducible
No availability database, code, or data extract accompanied the report, so no outside party can recompute its numbers. Reproducibility is now the cheapest, strongest armor a contested study can wear. The update should deliver a glass-box pipeline: data, code, decision log, and custody to the City.
The obligation
Five questions the baseline leaves open
A rigorous update treats each one as a testable hypothesis, with the method named in advance.
Did the reforms cause the movement?
Certified-MWBE spend roughly doubled after the 2021 executive order and the Sheltered Market Program. Causal attribution needs interrupted-time-series and department-level variation, not a before-and-after eyeball.
Why is the WBE line flat?
Certified woman-owned share has hovered near 2.5 percent for eight fiscal years while MBE share tripled. Different barrier, different channel, or a certification artifact? The update must decompose it.
How much participation is the certification lens missing?
The City's open data tracks certified firms. BBC measured participation certified or not. Closing that measurement gap is a data-collection task the update should plan for on day one.
Did construction move?
The deepest 2020 disparity (index 34 combined) sat in construction, and the new RFP adds construction workforce participation to the scope. Certified payroll and project-level records make that measurable.
Are the goals calibrated to today's market?
The 25 percent goal was set against 16.9 percent measured availability from FY15-19 data. A defensible update re-measures availability before it re-litigates utilization.
The methods behind each question live in the approach ladder and the published data-and-questions inventory.