FBO | The Contracting Education Academy

December 23, 2020 By cs

GSA’s SAM.gov will lose its ‘beta’ in April

The legacy SAM.gov will be shuttered and all the capabilities will be folded into the new SAM.gov, which currently goes by beta.SAM.gov.

The registration site for organizations doing business with the federal government will be migrating to the new central website for all procurement systems, allowing the latter to drop the “beta” designation and clear up some confusing nomenclature.

The System for Award Management, currently housed at SAM.gov, is used by federal contractors and grantees to register for the unique number used to identify the organization in official documents — similar to a Social Security number. The site, managed by the General Services Administration, shares a name with the agency’s developing central procurement hub, beta.SAM.gov.

GSA’s Integrated Award Environment program office has been working on consolidating all related procurement tools on a single website since 2018. The effort started with migrating the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, or CFDA, and Wage Determination Online, or WDOL, tools to beta.SAM, followed by two of the most-used acquisition tools in government.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/12/gsas-central-procurement-hub-will-lose-beta-april/170541/

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/

January 3, 2020 By cs

A busy 2020 for GSA

During the first three months of the New Year, the General Services Administration will have its hands full as some of its most ambitious projects move ahead.

In the first quarter of the 2020 calendar year, the agency is slated to test a small conceptual version of its Amazon-like e-commerce portal, push out solicitations to vendors about its buying schedule awards consolidation and begin throttling continued agency customer use of its old telecommunications contracts in favor of its next-generation vehicle.

It will also continue to get control of a bumpy transition from the FedBizOpps contract information site to the new beta.SAM.gov. portal.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/12/20/gsa-busy-first-quarter-rockwell.aspx

The legacy SAM.gov will be shuttered and all the capabilities will be folded into the new SAM.gov, which currently goes by beta.SAM.gov.

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.

During the first three months of the New Year, the General Services Administration will have its hands full as some of its most ambitious projects move ahead.

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