FPDS | The Contracting Education Academy

December 4, 2019 By cs

Complaints continue as GSA moves forward with beta.SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is trying to address problems with the contract opportunity portion of the new beta.SAM.gov website and has added some functions that industry has been complaining about.

Complaining actually might be too weak a word. Howls from industry have been fierce since GSA shut down the old FBO.gov and migrated contract opportunity data to beta.SAM.gov.

Many functions and ease of use that FBO.gov offered have disappeared and users have been vocal about their displeasure.

GSA has addressed some of those. For example, users of beta.SAM.gov can now search by solicitation number. But other legacy functions are still missing, such as email alerts for tracked procurements.

GSA promises that email alerts are under development. No word yet on when it will be added.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2019/12/beta-sam-gsa-notes.aspx

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

March 4, 2019 By AMK

IBM to support operation, migration on 2 GSA contract data systems

IBM will operate and maintain two online contracting data repositories under the purview of the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a $24.5M contract from the agency.

GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service said in a FedBizOpps notice posted last Wednesday that IBM will help manage the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) and the System for Award Management (SAM) as well as migrate data and functionality to an updated version of the SAM system.

Source: https://www.govconwire.com/2019/02/ibm-to-support-operation-migration-on-two-gsa-contracting-data-systems/

October 23, 2018 By AMK

Are GSA’s bold data management and transparency moves the right moves?

Data is essential to guide evidence-based decision-making, a critical best practice toward informed policy development.

A recent Government Accountability Office report has taken the government to task for failing to properly implement empirically sound and evidence-based practices as part of their deliberative process.

To encourage evidence-based decision-making, the recent President’s Management Agenda laid out a new cross-agency priority goal—“Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset”—to develop and implement a comprehensive federal data strategy. Over the course of the next year, with input from the full spectrum of government and non-government stakeholders, the first governmentwide data strategy will be developed, along with specific recommendations for implementation. Office of Management and Budget sought to inform this process by issuing a comment draft in June.

By most accounts, the commitment to an overarching federal data strategy is welcome and timely. Huge amounts of data collected and managed by the federal government can be applied in a large variety of ways to foster economic growth and social good.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2018/10/are-gsas-bold-data-management-and-transparency-moves-right-moves/152043/

September 26, 2018 By AMK

New field in FPDS for contracting actions related to Hurricane Florence

A new field in has been added to the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) to allow for the tracking of acquisition costs of federal agencies involved in Hurricane Florence recovery efforts, an incident of great national interest.

The General Services Administration (GSA) created this new National Interest Action (NIA) to the NIA field in the FPDS in conjunction with an agreement between GSA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Effective 9/13/18 through 12/15/18, this new NIA Code will be used strictly for reporting purposes related to Hurricane Florence.

In addition to the date range noted above, FPDS system details for this new NIA are:

NIA Value Name: Hurricane Florence 2018
Web Portal/Graphical User Interface (GUI) service users may select the value Hurricane Florence
2018 in the National Interest Action drop-down field.
Contract Writing Systems (CWS) are to use the code of H18F when creating/updating documents
associated with the Hurricane Florence 2018 through Business Services.

Any FPDS system questions or problems may be directed to the Federal Service Desk (FSD) at https://www.fsd.gov.

September 25, 2018 By AMK

3 big problems continue to dog federal procurement

Congress and the executive branch have worked for years to improve the quality of and reduce costs for federal acquisition, but some problems continue to hamper many agencies, according to a Sept. 12 Government Accountability Office report.

“Acquisition reform has been on everyone’s agenda for many, many years, decades. There have been proposals in the Congress, there has been changes to the regulations. This has been a very, very active area for a long time,” said Bill Woods, director on the Contracting and National Security Acquisitions Team at GAO, in an agency podcast.

The report evaluated federal agency acquisition improvements against 89 recommendations made by the Acquisition Advisory Panel in 2007 and divided the areas of improvement into three “buckets” that represent the acquisition life cycle: requirements and definitions; competition and pricing; and contractor oversight.

“One is in the requirements, definition process of actually deciding. What is it does the agency want? What does it need, and what’s the best way of getting what we need?” said Woods.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/17/3-big-problems-continue-to-dog-federal-procurement/

The General Services Administration (GSA) is trying to address problems with the contract opportunity portion of the new beta.SAM.gov website and has added some functions that industry has been complaining about.

IBM will operate and maintain two online contracting data repositories under the purview of the General Services Administration (GSA) as part of a $24.5M contract from the agency.

Data is essential to guide evidence-based decision-making, a critical best practice toward informed policy development.

A new field in has been added to the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) to allow for the tracking of acquisition costs of federal agencies involved in Hurricane Florence recovery efforts, an incident of great national interest.

Congress and the executive branch have worked for years to improve the quality of and reduce costs for federal acquisition, but some problems continue to hamper many agencies, according to a Sept. 12 Government Accountability Office report.

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