beta.SAM.gov | The Contracting Education Academy

October 6, 2020 By cs

IG finds ‘significant inaccuracies’ in Federal Acquisition Service’s reporting of small business contracts

This resulted from issues with the GSA-managed federal procurement data system.

There have been “significant inaccuracies” in the Federal Acquisition Service’s reporting of small business contracts, a watchdog reported earlier this week.

The General Service Administration inspector general has issued a report that looked at the data GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service entered into the Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation, which is managed by GSA. The Small Business Administration uses that system to assess if the federal government achieves its overall annual goal of awarding 23% of contracts to small businesses. Based on its review of Federal Acquisition Service procurements from fiscal 2016 and 2017 (that totaled $3.7 billion), the IG identified issues that led to overstating of small businesses procurements.

“We found that FAS’s reporting of small business procurements contained significant inaccuracies. We identified $89 million in procurements erroneously recorded as small business in [the Federal Procurement Data System–Next Generation],” said the IG. “In addition, FAS’ small business procurement reporting does not identify the extent of the work performed by large businesses. We found approximately $120 million of small business procurements in which large businesses performed a portion of the work.”

The IG reviewed the agency’s contracting data and internal policies as well as interviewed GSA officials and small business contractors, for its audit that was conducted from June 2018 to June 2019. While the report was about FAS, the IG found the issues were, in some ways, out the agency’s control.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/analytics-data/2020/09/ig-finds-significant-inaccuracies-federal-acquisition-services-reporting-small-business-contracts/168602/

September 25, 2020 By cs

How and when GSA’s new central contracting portal will lose the ‘beta’

The next major transition to beta.SAM — the FPDS contract award data reporting tools — is coming next month, with the legacy SAM.gov next on deck.

Next month, the reporting function of a key federal contracting data tool will be retired as officials push users toward a new tool on a new site destined to become the central hub for all government contracting.

Moving the reporting functions of the Federal Procurement Data System — and other parts of the larger transition—has led to widespread frustration and confusion among contracting officers and vendors alike. The program office managing the transition is hoping to quell these issues for future roll-outs and through improved training sessions for users.

The General Services Administration is in the midst of an ambitious plan to consolidate every federal contracting tool—vendor registration, solicitations, contracts databases, past performance information, wage rates—on a single website.

The final site will be called SAM.gov — named for the System for Awards Management — but it won’t be the same as the current SAM.gov, where federal contractors go to register their companies before being allowed to bid on solicitations. The original SAM.gov is still live while the Integrated Award Environment, or IAE, team at GSA moves functionality for that and other tools to the beta.SAM.gov website.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/09/how-and-when-gsas-new-central-contracting-portal-will-lose-beta/168420/

August 27, 2020 By cs

FPDS reports will officially move to beta.SAM by mid-October

Users will no longer be able to run contract award reports through FPDS.gov, though that site will retain other capabilities.

As of October 17, federal vendors, contracting researchers and watchers and any other interested party, will no longer be able to run or access contract award data reports through the Federal Procurement Data System at FPDS.gov.

On that date, the General Services Administration expects to have completed the full migration of FDPS’s reporting functions—administrative, static, standard and ad hoc reports—to the beta.SAM.gov website under the Data Bank page.

“At that time, beta.SAM.gov will be the only place to create and run contract data reports and the reports module in FPDS.gov will be retired,” according to an update in GSA’s new beta.SAM.gov newsletter.

Originally, all of the reports functions were slated to transfer to beta.SAM.gov in March. However, GSA opted for a “soft launch” this spring, with an “agile iterative improvement process” set to conclude in October.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/08/fpds-reports-will-officially-move-betasam-mid-october/167685/

May 8, 2020 By cs

GSA extends procurement data reports transition due to coronavirus, feedback

The General Services Administration (GSA) won’t require anyone to use the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) reports function within beta.SAM.gov until the end of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

FPDS.gov tracks all federal contracts of $10,000 or more, and its reporting module uses transactional data from procurements in ad hoc, standard and static reports.

The Integrated Award Environment office at GSA began moving its reports function to beta.SAM.gov on Feb. 1 but is now calling it a soft launch.

“We want to require the FPDS reports by the end of this year,” said Vicky Niblett, deputy assistant commissioner at IAE, during an ACT-IAC virtual session. “I will say we had wanted to do it sooner, but with COVID-19 and what we heard from our users, we are now targeting a little bit closer to the end of the year.”

IAE learned it needs to give the contracting community more lead time into transitions because there is a “large” learning curve using the new ad hoc report tool, MicroStrategy (not to be confused with the business intelligence company). The migration to beta.SAM.gov’s Data Bank was slated for completion on March 16, but for now, FPDS.gov users can continue creating reports there — though they won’t transfer.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/gsa-fpds-reports-transition-extended/

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

March 12, 2020 By cs

Pilot IRS to return with new focus areas and significantly more funding

In the next three to six months, the IRS plans to issue new solicitations through its experimental contracting vehicle.

The IRS is considering tripling down on its experimental procurement vehicle Pilot IRS — an incremental funding program the tax agency uses to identify and develop cutting-edge technologies—with the second iteration of the program coming in the next few months, with three new focus areas and more than three times the funding up for grabs.

The first iteration of Pilot IRS sought to update the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, or FPDS-NG, using robotic process automation tools to improve data quality and limit the amount of manual data entry. As with other alternative procurement methods like other transaction authority contracts, the Pilot IRS program uses a multi-phased funding approach that rewards vendors that meet milestones in a timely fashion.

Three weeks after issuing the solicitation in August, the IRS made five awards for the first phase, totaling $25,000. Since that time, “Two firms continue to receive funding, and have demonstrated return on investment rates of roughly 30-80% reductions in time required to make corrections to and improve the data in FPDS-NG,” according to a program update posted last Wednesday to beta.SAM.gov.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2020/03/pilot-irs-return-new-focus-areas-and-significantly-more-funding/163526/

This resulted from issues with the GSA-managed federal procurement data system.

The next major transition to beta.SAM — the FPDS contract award data reporting tools — is coming next month, with the legacy SAM.gov next on deck.

Users will no longer be able to run contract award reports through FPDS.gov, though that site will retain other capabilities.

The General Services Administration (GSA) won’t require anyone to use the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) reports function within beta.SAM.gov until the end of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the next three to six months, the IRS plans to issue new solicitations through its experimental contracting vehicle.

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