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Administration adds 16 months to transition from DUNS to Unique ID

The General Services Administration will extend Dun & Bradstreet’s services while agencies get more time to patch and test systems. 

GSA pushed the deadline for adopting a new identifier for non-governmental organizations receiving funds from the government, giving federal agencies and contractors another 16 months to patch and test their systems.

The government is shifting from the DUNS number — the unique identifier for every organization doing business with the government since 1962 — to the Unique Entity Identifier. Agencies were originally expected to make the switch by December 2020 but have been given an extension to April 2022.

However, federal officials tell Nextgov the deadline extension will only help if agencies and organizations are able to use DUNS and UEI numbers at the same time during a testing period, which might be possible under the revised timeline.

Procurement, grants and financial reporting executives across the government were scrambling to meet the December 2020 deadline to turn off an almost 60-year standard for identifying organizations doing business with the government and switch to a brand new system introduced last year.

“This is a pretty unique business problem,” an agency official working through the transition told Nextgov. “This is not just large-scale system modernization. This is the most interdependent thing about doing business between the federal government and a non-federal entity—it’s at the heart of it.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/analytics-data/2020/10/administration-adds-16-months-transition-duns-unique-id/169636/

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SBA looks to tighten up certification process for women-owned small businesses

Women-owned small businesses, take note: the Small Business Administration is changing the certification process for doing business with the federal government.

Following a 2015 mandate from Congress, SBA will end its self-certification process for women-owned small businesses on October 15.  This comes after the agency’s inspector general found contract awards were going to vendors that didn’t meet the criteria for the program.

Business owners since last Wednesday have been able to submit their applications through the online platform, but SBA will only begin issuing decisions on those submitted applications on Oct. 15, the last day of the self-certification process.

Alisa Sheard, a program manager in SBA Women’s Contracting Office, said businesses already certified through the WOSB program must also go through the new certification process, requiring business owners to copy information found on their SAM.gov profile and transfer it to SBA’s online certification platform.

“Everyone will still need to submit answers to questions and upload documents because there’s no data migration. Those documents that were in the different system are not in this beta certified system, so they will have to upload all of those documents,” Sheard said in an interview.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/07/sba-looks-to-tighten-up-certification-process-for-women-owned-small-businesses/

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GSA’s procurement database is heading to a new home

The General Service Administration’s procurement database will be migrating to the agency’s new contracting website by the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2020, according to a GSA news release.

 

The Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation (FPDS-NG), which collects and reports procurement data from federal agencies, will be transitioned over to the new beta.SAM.gov website, the new GSA site that lists federal contracts and other contract data.

The migration is part of a larger GSA effort to consolidate its legacy websites to a single site.

The FPDS site serves several purposes for contractors and researchers.  On the site, users can research procurement data, validate procurement vehicles and modify transactions.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/it-networks/2020/01/24/gsas-procurement-database-is-heading-to-a-new-home/

See fact sheet on transition here: FPDS Reports Are Transitioning – Fact Sheet – 01.2020

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FBO no mo’

Today, beta.SAM.gov became the official source for federal business opportunities, replacing FBO.gov. 
This is the message visitors now see at FBO.gov.

FBO, which stood for Federal Business Opportunities (or the shortened term FedBizOpps), contained a list of virtually every federal contract valued at more than $25,000.  These contracts can now be found in the “Contract Opportunities” section of beta.SAM.gov.

The General Services Administration (GSA) is in charge of beta.SAM.gov.  GSA’s vision for the merged databases is “a ‘family tree’ that organizes federal government users and establishes relationships between each department/independent agency’s sub-tiers and its offices.”

Visitors who attempt to go to FBO.gov are automatically rerouted to fbohome.sam.gov which provides notice that FBO has moved.

In visiting the new site today, we encountered long delays in connecting to beta.SAM.gov as well as to its Contract Opportunities page at beta.sam.gov/help/contract-opportunities.  Users encountered similar delays when GSA last month moved the FARSite operated since 1996 by Hill Air Force Base to GSA-managed Acquisition.gov.   Because of high traffic, GSA had to delay the transition from Oct. 1 to Oct. 21.

Links on beta.SAM.gov appear to be working, but users will experience delays in moving from one page to another and in downloading documents.  Notably, we had to make multiple attempts to open the “FBO Transition Guide for Federal Administrators.”   The Guide provides instructions to federal officials on how to post contract opportunities and related information to beta.SAM.gov.  We encountered similar delays when trying to open various “Quick Start” guides.

The shift of FBO.gov to beta.SAM.gov is part of a larger merger of many legacy systems into one database.  Previously, “Wage Determinations Online” and the “Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance” were shifted into beta.SAM.gov.

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FedBizOpps to merge with SAM.gov before year’s end

The General Services Administration (GSA) has announced that FedBizOpps.gov will migrate to a new SAM.gov site as early as the first quarter of FY20.

All totalled, as many as 10 GSA-managed websites are expected to be merged into SAM.gov by the end of 2019.

In addition to FedBizOpps and the existing SAM site, the other websites to be consolidated are: the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA), Wage Determinations Online (WDOL), Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), and contractor past performance databases Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), Contractor Performance Assessment Reports System (CPARS), and the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS).

Once made a part of SAM.gov, FedBizOpps will be identified as “Contract Opportunities.”  A full description of the changes to be made to FedBizOpps, including new features to be introduced once the transition to SAM.gov is complete, appears in a fact sheet issued by GSA.  The fact sheet can be found here: FedBizOpps To Become ‘Contract Opportunities’ in SAM.gov

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