All legal entities in the world should subscribe to a common identification system, so the public can track their relationships, according to a new report.
Doing so could disrupt the monopoly Dun & Bradstreet has on the identification numbers contractors use to work with the federal government. But if the public and federal government want to better understand where money goes, they’re going to need to use a common identification system, the report from records giant Lexis Nexis and the Data Foundation, a government-transparency focused advocacy group, argued.
When government agencies track awards to contractors, they sometimes use their own identification systems for internal purposes. In the U.S., federal procurement officers also use Dun & Bradstreet’s “DUNS Number” to tag every contractor; those businesses are required to register for their own number through Dun & Bradstreet itself. But those contractors also use proprietary ID tags, and often both groups silo their identification system by the industry the business is in.
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But some transparency advocates consider the step insufficient.
The agency released a request for information on Feb. 13, 2017 in advance of the possible adoption of a new numbering system for “government-wide entity identification and validation services.”
OMB 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.
