The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).
This means that plans GSA made as far back as 2001 may be realized sometime in 2018.
At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.
The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013, cost overruns, accessibility issues, and periodic interface difficulties with SBA’s small business database.
GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM: the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.
A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.
The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and government officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, contract award data on prime contractors and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from pursuing government work.
Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.gov) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that are merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.
Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.
