SAM.gov | The Contracting Education Academy

June 12, 2017 By AMK

Changes coming to SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM).

At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.

The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many access problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013 and periodic difficulties with the interface with SBA’s small business database.

GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM – the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.

A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.

The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and federal officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, award data for prime and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from government work.

Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.go) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that were merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.

Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.

Vendors are reminded that there is no cost to use SAM. Vendors may use SAM.gov free-of-charge to:

Register to do business with the U.S. government
Update or renew registrations
Check status of an entity registration
Search for entity registration and exclusion records

November 23, 2015 By AMK

GSA settles discrimination suit with blind contractors

Three blind federal contractors who sued the General Services Administration (GSA) over a website that they said was not accessible to the visually impaired have settled with the agency.

A lawyer representing the contractors announced the settlement on Nov. 12.

“This is an excellent result not only for our clients, but for the blind community as a whole,” said Lewis Wiener, co-chair of Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, in a statement.

The 18-month lawsuit began when the contractors found that one of GSA’s websites, the System for Award Management or SAM.gov, was not accessible for the visually impaired and prevented the trio from maintaining their contractor status.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/gsa-gwac/2015/11/12/gsa-settles-discrimination-suit-blind-contractors/75645622/

May 2, 2014 By AMK

Lawsuit says GSA discriminates against blind contractors

A group of blind federal contractors filed a lawsuit against the General Services Administration last week over a contractor website they say shuts out the visually impaired.

The System for Award Management website, SAM.gov, contains numerous buttons, checkboxes, drop-down menus and “mouseovers” that federal contractors must navigate each year in order to keep their contractor status current. Those bells and whistles make it difficult or impossible for screen reading software that blind people use to navigate the Internet to decode the site, the suit claims.

GSA phone-in help desk employees are also not sufficiently trained in disability issues, the suit claims, making it even more difficult for blind contractors to complete their registrations.

The suit was filed as a class action by the American Council for the Blind and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The groups claim GSA violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which, among other things, bars discrimination against federal contractors and grantees based solely on a disability.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2014/04/lawsuit-says-gsa-discriminates-against-blind-contractors/83179/

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM).

Three blind federal contractors who sued the General Services Administration (GSA) over a website that they said was not accessible to the visually impaired have settled with the agency.

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