Karen Mills, the head of the Small Business Administration, was a venture capitalist living in Brunswick, Maine, in 2005 when the Defense Department announced it was closing the naval air station in her town. That's when the governor asked for her help in creating more jobs for the hard-hit community.

"This [base] was 500 yards from my house," Mills told Federal Times in a recent interview. "I had to get involved."

And thus began her public service career.

Mills created an economic cluster — a network of firms, governmental and private investors working together to develop an industry — that would join Maine boat builders with the state-funded Maine Technology Institute toward the goal of developing the use of ultralight composite materials in boat building.

The result is that Maine boat builders are now technologically better prepared to compete globally, she said.

"That cluster coming together and being the foundation stone for revitalizing the economy of Brunswick, Maine, really became a model, and I took that model ... to help with more clusters," she said. Maine Technology Institute offers grants for the development of maritime, agricultural, forestry, energy and information technologies.

In 2008, Mills co-wrote a Brookings Institution paper that recommended the federal government adopt this model to develop other small businesses. The attention that Mills' clusters gained prompted President Barack Obama to include her on his transition team and nominate her to head SBA.

Most recently, SBA, the Defense Department and Michigan automotive robotics manufacturers have discussed creating a similar cluster to find new avenues for applying robotic manufacturing techniques — particularly at small businesses.

"If we're going to create jobs in America, it's going to be through the growth of small businesses," Mills said.

Q: How are you ensuring SBA and its staff have the internal tools to grow small businesses?

Mills: We're going to do that in three ways. We're going to invest in our people. And that's a whole series of training and activities. We're going to invest in information technology. And we're going to invest in our capability to do our oversight activity so we can go after issues of waste, fraud and abuse.

Q: How will you invest in the workforce?

Mills: In the past, there has been tremendous response to something we call "SBA University." We're moving to SBA University 2.0 and evolving it to today's market. We feel strongly about supporting and training our managers so the managers know how to listen, communicate and create a positive environment for their staff. ... This is an agency that, over the past years, has not had significant investment in it. In fact, it has had over a 40 percent decrease in the personnel and budget in real terms. We are now, as I said, reinvesting in the agency in these core areas of investing in our people, investing in information technology and investing in our capability to oversee our programs and reduce and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.

Q: What information technology investments are you planning?

Mills: We have a number of investments we're making, including a customer relations management system ... that will allow a data-rich environment. I'm a believer in fact-based analysis and metrics. We have a dashboard we track so that we define what outcomes we want to deliver so we can track our progress and when we get there, we can celebrate a victory. Our information systems help us understand the activities we're undertaking and measure risk and progress.

The second one is the outward-facing technology for the SBA — that's our Web sites and our online access to loan applications. We're working very hard with technology to make the experience of dealing with the SBA positive, accessible and seamless, so people would be able to apply online and get the information they need right now. ... We have to focus, for the future, on being sure that we expand our points of access to the SBA in terms of banks that will be able to give you SBA products and guarantees.

Q: What oversight investments are you planning?

Mills: We are investing in tracking our government [small-business] contracts. We've determined we're going to ... understand the best practices in terms of making sure all agencies have access to all of these innovative small businesses and that the small businesses have access to the contracts and opportunities. We're using Web sites, technology and hands-on events to make that happen.

Q: On the contracting side, agencies have failed to meet their small-business goals and there has been controversy about whether contracts counted as small business actually went to small businesses. What is SBA doing to address these issues?

Mills: The contracting goal for small business is 23 percent, and we play a central role in making sure small businesses have opportunity to do those contracts. ... We do a tremendous amount of activity with each agency to make sure we have the tools and skills they need to access small business. We do matchmaking events.

In [executing] the Recovery Act, we have had a lot of success with our numbers. We're at 26 percent of [contracts going to] small businesses, and we're beating our goals in a number of our subcategories. The vice president and the president have made this a priority. We sit around the table every two weeks with the vice president, and all the agencies have bought into this. We have worked with them [agencies] to establish a series of these matchmaking events and other activities that help them find these terrific small businesses.