The Mayor's Office of Small and Emerging Business Development worked with small and emerging businesses in Orleans Parish to enhance their opportunities for growth. It assisted small businesses in recognizing opportunities to do business with the City of New Orleans, and initiated programs to better prepare them to more competitively pursue private sector opportunities. The Office worked to assist city agencies and quasi agencies in better coordinating their small business development programs to provide more valuable and efficient services to the small business community.

The Office sponsored workshops, educational activities, a newsletter, and special programs designed to identify procurement opportunities. Of particular importance was its role in monitoring the city's Open Access Plan, created by Mayor Morial in 1995 in an effort to provide disadvantaged, minority, and women-owned business enterprises with a stake in major construction and other development projects in the Crescent City.