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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

October 22, 2014 By AMK

FAR council lays out process for standard contract ID system

Federal Acquisition Regulations Council issued a final rule Monday that lays out how and when agencies should transition over to a standard identification system for federal contracts.

Agencies have until Oct. 1 2017 to implement the new Procurement Instrument Identification numbering system. PIID will only affect new contracts after the effective date, the rule says.

The proposed rule was introduced back in June 2013 and came at the suggestion of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board’s recommendation to develop a governmentwide numbering system for contracts.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/far-council-lays-out-process-standard-contract-id-system/2014-10-14

The final rule is published in the Federal Register at: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/10/14/2014-24233/federal-acquisition-regulation-federal-acquisition-circular-2005-77-introduction

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: contract identification, FAR, FAR Council, PIID

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