beta.SAM.gov | The Contracting Education Academy

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/

March 2, 2020 By cs

Change is hard vs. real problems: The tale of the beta.sam.gov portal

In the three months since the General Services Administration transitioned to the beta.sam.gov portal for contract opportunities from the decades-old FedBizOpps.gov site, the raw numbers show concerns over the site have settled down.

The site has seen almost 900,000 visitors and 120,000 registered users since November. The number of calls to GSA’s help desk is at or below the levels that came in during the pre-transition time.

“We don’t get any more help desk calls or asks for intervention than we did with the legacy FBO. And the calls we do get are generally around two things: how to log in and do multi-factor authentication and the second is how to use the new search features because they look very different than the legacy site,” said Judith Zawatsky, assistant commissioner in the Office of Systems Management in GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, in an interview with Federal News Network.

But if you dig deeper, particularly the folks who understand the inner workings of the new site, frustration and disappointment over the transition and functionality of beta.sam.gov continue.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2020/02/change-is-hard-vs-real-problems-the-tale-of-the-beta-sam-gov-portal/

February 14, 2020 By cs

Federal contracting community shreds FBO replacement site in letter to GSA

“If this had the same notoriety as Healthcare.gov, people would have been fired.”

The transition of the federal contracting opportunities website from Federal Business Opportunities, better known as FedBizOpps or FBO, to the Contracting Opportunities page of beta.SAM.gov caused concern ahead of the migration and frustration after the move. Three months after the transition finished, the government contracting community’s anger has yet to be assuaged.

Last week, the Professional Services Council — an industry group representing 400 federal contractors — sent a letter to the General Services Administration detailing its members’ concerns and asking for immediate action.

“It was … with consternation and concern that PSC watched the dissolution of GSA’s FedBizOps portal and the difficult transition to beta.Sam.gov as its replacement,” PSC Executive Vice President and Counsel Alan Chvotkin wrote in the letter to Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Julie Dunne. “Regrettably, initial ‘bumps in the road’ have continued beyond the functionality that GSA announced would not be carried over from the old system, and our members asked that we bring their views to your attention.”

PSC members decried the new site, with many telling GSA they would prefer to see the old FBO site recommissioned.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/02/federal-contracting-community-shreds-fbo-replacement-site-letter-gsa/163076/

See our earlier articles on this subject at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/?s=beta

See GSA memo regarding transition of FBO.gov to beta.sam.gov at: FBO Has Transitioned to Beta 2

Hints for using the new Contract Opportunities function in beta.SAM.gov are here: https://interact.gsa.gov/blog/helpful-hints-new-contract-opportunities-function-betasamgov-how-use-search-filters

February 13, 2020 By cs

Procurement reporting tool is moving to SAM, but FPDS.gov isn’t going anywhere

GSA is moving the central reporting function of the Federal Procurement Data System to beta.SAM while Treasury works to improve the quality of data reported through the site.

As the General Services Administration continues to develop a one-stop website for all federal contracting at beta.SAM.gov, the main reporting functions of the Federal Procurement Data System, or FPDS, will be added to the site in March. However, the current FPDS website, fpds.gov, isn’t going anywhere any time soon and is slated for an upgrade.

Several procurement websites and apps have already been migrated to beta.SAM.gov, including Wage Determination Online, or WDOL, the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, or CFDA, and the government’s main contract opportunities site Federal Business Opportunities, better known as FedBizOpps or FBO.

FPDS is next on deck, with the four main reporting functions—administrative, static, standard and ad hoc—prepped to migrate to SAM by March 16. But for the time being, fpds.gov will remain.

“All other functions—search, agency contract award data entry, data extracts—will remain at fpds.gov as the site is not retiring at this time,” a GSA spokesperson told Nextgov.

That said, users will no longer be able to run any reports on fpds.gov.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/02/procurement-reporting-tool-moving-sam-fpdsgov-isnt-going-anywhere/162904/

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.

In the three months since the General Services Administration transitioned to the beta.sam.gov portal for contract opportunities from the decades-old FedBizOpps.gov site, the raw numbers show concerns over the site have settled down.

“If this had the same notoriety as Healthcare.gov, people would have been fired.”

GSA is moving the central reporting function of the Federal Procurement Data System to beta.SAM while Treasury works to improve the quality of data reported through the site.

Search this Website