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.

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.

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/