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February 3, 2020 By cs

GSA’s procurement database is heading to a new home

The General Service Administration’s procurement database will be migrating to the agency’s new contracting website by the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2020, according to a GSA news release.

 

The Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation (FPDS-NG), which collects and reports procurement data from federal agencies, will be transitioned over to the new beta.SAM.gov website, the new GSA site that lists federal contracts and other contract data.

The migration is part of a larger GSA effort to consolidate its legacy websites to a single site.

The FPDS site serves several purposes for contractors and researchers.  On the site, users can research procurement data, validate procurement vehicles and modify transactions.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/2020/01/24/gsas-procurement-database-is-heading-to-a-new-home/

See fact sheet on transition here: FPDS Reports Are Transitioning – Fact Sheet – 01.2020

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: awards, beta.SAM.gov, contract award, FPDS, FPDS-NG', GSA, market research, procurement data, SAM.gov

August 20, 2018 By AMK

Federal acquisition workers rate themselves highly on most skills

The government’s civilian acquisition workforce, long under pressure to improve hiring and modernize its skill sets, is feeling more satisfied with its own effectiveness, according to the latest biennial Acquisition Workforce Competency Survey released last week.
Click on image above to see report.

Considered the most comprehensive version of the survey yet (an 83 percent increase in response rates across agencies), it showed that the buyers rated themselves highest for issuing contract order changes and modifications, awarding contracts and competition. Also rated highly were inspection and acceptance and business acumen, said the results analyzed by a partnership between the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy and the Federal Acquisition Institute.

Areas rated the lowest in proficiency included negotiating forward pricing rates agreements and contracting in contingent or combat environments.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/contracting/2018/08/federal-acquisition-workers-rate-themselves-highly-most-skills/150611

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acceptance, acquisition training, acquisition workforce, awards, career development, change orders, combat environment, competence, competition, contingency contracting, contract award, FAI, forward pricing, inspection, OFPP, training

June 14, 2016 By AMK

Time is ripe to dump the DUNS, industry data group says

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) seems to be exploring possible alternatives to the proprietary standard that agencies have used for decades to identify companies and organizations that win federal grants and contract awards.

ombOMB leaders indicated at a recent DATA Coalition summit that they will conduct an alternatives analysis to the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, which the federal government uses through a contract with the company Dun & Bradstreet.

And the General Services Administration’s 18F team is developing an identification code that would temporarily help agencies move from the nine-digit DUNS number to another standard, according to Hudson Hollister, executive director for the DATA Coalition.

The costs and technical challenges of moving away from the DUNS to another system for identifying and tracking contractors would be simply too great, the Government Accountability Office said in 2012.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/open-datatransparency/2016/05/time-ripe-dump-duns-industry-data-group-says/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: awards, contract award, contract identification, DoD, Dun & Bradstreet, DUNS, Federal Acquisition Council, GAO, GSA, Legal Entity Identifier, LEI, NASA, OMB, SAM, spending, System for Award Management, transparency

February 2, 2016 By AMK

Federal government proposing to dump use of DUNS numbers

In 2015, the federal government spent nearly half of a trillion dollars on contracts with private companies—$436,668,103,830, to be exact.

DUNS numberMembers of the public are free to drill down into this data and track funding going to specific businesses, thanks to a series of policies designed to increase government transparency and accountability by treating information about government spending as open data—machine readable, timely and freely available online.

However, federal contracting policy requires the use of a specific proprietary data standard to keep track of entities receiving federal funds.

Known as the Data Universal Numbering System, or DUNS, the current standard was developed by business information reporting company Dun & Bradstreet. And therein lies a problem: Not only is the use of a proprietary standard antithetical to the principle of an open and transparent government, as it limits the usability and accessibility of the data, but the government has already recognized that requiring the use of DUNS grants Dun & Bradstreet a monopoly on data that uses DUNS numbers, reducing competition and increasing costs.

Fortunately, the General Services Administration, the Defense Department and NASA have recently proposed to amend federal contracting policy to eliminate the requirement to use DUNS, which would make data on government spending more transparent and usable by the government and the public alike.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/technology-news/tech-insider/2016/01/us-government-making-it-possible-dump-duns/125293/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: awards, contract award, contract identification, DoD, Dun & Bradstreet, DUNS, GSA, NASA, spending, transparency

August 26, 2015 By AMK

Agencies rely on contractor tool to spot procurement errors

Does federal contract award data need a few good proofreaders?

According to Jeff Sopko, executive vice president of the Alexandria, Va.-based PotomacWave consulting firm, about 20 percent to 30 percent of records in the government’s procurement database contain errors. “They stem from frequent changes in policy and procedures that take time to be implemented in source contract writing, as well as human errors,” he said. “The errors get pushed from the contract writing system to [the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation] with few validation checks.”

FPDS-NG

To address that problem, PotomacWave in 2012 created a software tool called FedDataCheck.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/08/agencies-rely-contractor-tool-spot-procurement-errors/119376

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: awards, contract data, errors, FPDS, FPDS-NG', procurement data

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