SAM | The Contracting Education Academy

August 14, 2012 By AMK

GSA issues IBM a letter of concern for problems with procurement system

The General Services Administration has officially ordered IBM to fix the troubled System for Award Management (SAM).

Sources confirmed GSA issued IBM a letter of concern Aug. 7. In the official notice, GSA told the company to develop a plan of action and milestones for how they will make SAM work more smoothly. Under the program, GSA wants to consolidate eight acquisition databases, including the Central Contractor Registration, the Past Performance Information Retrieval System and six others.

A letter of concern is a step before a cure letter, saying there are problems with the system but it’s not as bad as a cure letter.

GSA hired IBM under an eight- year, $74.4 million contract in 2010.

Keep reading this article at http://www.federalnewsradio.com/65/2988217/GSA-issues-letter-of-concern-for-problems-with-procurement-system.

For the latest news involving SAM, please visit: http://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/tag/sam

March 28, 2012 By AMK

SAM in a corner, says GAO

An estimated 89 percent cost growth in a General Services Administration-led project to consolidate online acquisition-related systems is largely the result of mistakes GSA has made, says the Government Accountability Office.

In a report dated March 15, GAO auditors say that GSA contract cost estimates show that an effort to integrate the back end of acquisition systems into a single database and consolidate the front-end systems into a new website dubbed System for Award Management will cost $181.1 million. GSA estimated in 2008 its modernization effort of the systems, collectively known as the Integrated Acquisition Environment, would require only $95.7 million in contract spending.

GAO attributes most of the growth to higher-than-expected hosting costs. GSA initially thought that hosting–costs of hardware, operating systems, connectivity and a physical facility–would run $2.8 million annually. GAO says it’s more like $8 million or $9 million a year.

In addition, GSA had planned to award a single hosting contract, but instead in 2009 awarded a contract to Qwest (now CenturyLink) for services limited to just a hosting facility and Internet connectivity. GSA then bought itself hosting hardware and software itself for $29 million and then re-negotiated a $74 million IAE modernization system architecture contract with IBM by adding an additional $36 million for the company to install, operate and maintain the hardware and software in the CenturyLink facility.

The increase in hosting costs came just at a time when Congress pared back appropriations funding for the modernization effort. GSA requested $15 million for fiscal 2011, but received just $7 million. It requested $38 million in fiscal 2012, but received $0. The fiscal 2013 budget proposal requests $21 million.

The lack of funding, coupled with the increases in costs, has driven GSA into a corner. It has responded by delaying the integration of systems into a consolidated backend, but that’s also forcing the agency to spend more than anticipated on operating legacy systems. According to the GAO, it’s now reached a point where it cannot afford to purchase hardware and software to complete phase two and three of the three phase project (the number of phases have changed over time), but maintain legacy systems will cause total IAE costs to rise.

Auditors say GSA should now reassess the business case for modernization and consider terminating phases two and three. If it decides not to, then it should reevaluate its hosting contracting strategy, and also renegotiate the IBM contract. GSA, the report says, has been paying IBM hosting costs associated with phases two and three according to a schedule that assumed the company would have additional responsibilities by now–despite the fact that schedule delays have pushed much of that work out to the future.

For more: download the report, GAO-12-429.

— Published on FierceGovernmentIT, March 18, 2012, at http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/sam-corner-says-gao/2012-03-18?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal.

October 28, 2011 By AMK

SAM deployment likely to be delayed; GSA might replace DUNS

A General Services Administration (GSA) effort to consolidate federal online acquisition systems will likely receive no development money during the current fiscal year, causing GSA officials to anticipate a delay in the project.

However, GSA officials are going forward with a planned sources sought notice, to be released shortly, seeking private sector input on the viability of replacing mandatory federal vendor acquirement of a DUNS number from Dun & Bradstreet with a government-generated unique identifier. [Editor’s Note: The sources sought was published on Oct. 27, 2011, with response deadline of Nov. 21, 2011. Details on the sources sought may be viewed at https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=4cfa1aa7d67a29f5aeb3146f1cbf4758&tab=core&_cview=0.]

If the government does replace DUNS with its own unique identifier system for vendors, the transition would likely be tied to the third phase of the online acquisition system consolidation effort, said Kathleen Turco, head of GSA’s office of governmentwide policy, during an Oct. 21 interview.

The integration effort seeks to consolidate 9 currently separate systems into one, to be known as the System for Award Management, or SAM. IBM received a $74.4 million contract in 2010 to develop the SAM architecture; part of the consolidation effort includes unifying the currently disparate databases into a single, unified one.

Because GSA received $7 million in development funds during fiscal 2011, which ended on Sept. 30, it will be able to proceed with the first phase of the consolidation, which will tie together Central Contractor Registration, Online Representations and Certifications Application and the Excluded Parties List System.

Starting in May, front-end users will find that they have to log onto SAM only once to access the functionalities of all three systems, Turco said.

However, a request for $15 million in development, modernization and enhancement money for the current fiscal year has bumped up against spending constraints; the Senate Appropriations Committee markup of GSA’s fiscal 2012 spending bill denied the request in total. The House version would appropriate about $3 million in DME money for the project, Turco said. Congress has yet to pass any fiscal 2012 appropriations bill; the federal government is operating under a continuing resolution that expires on midnight of Nov. 18.

As a result of the House and Senate marks, Turco said GSA will likely postpone roll out of phase 2, under which GSA plans to consolidate FedBizOps, the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System, and the Assistance Program Catalog. Originally, GSA had planned to unveil that phase in the spring of 2013; if GSA receives sufficient funding for fiscal 2013, it would be able to complete that phase in spring 2014, Turco said.

The third phase would consolidate FPDS , Wage Determinations Online and the Past Performance Information Retrieval System. The earliest phase 3 could now be completed–it was originally planned for spring 2014–is now spring 2015, Turco said.

It’s in conjunction with phase 3 that GSA would likely also transition from using DUNS as a unique vendor identifier to a government-generated number, if GSA decides to do so, Turco added.

Vendors wishing to do business with the government must receive a unique identifier–in some cases, more than one, depending on the number of physical locations and legal divisions a company has–and GSA has long contracted with Dun & Bradstreet for government vendors to receive Data Universal Numbering System identifier for free.

But, the government pays Dun & Bradstreet $18 million a year for the service, making it the single most expensive element of the Integrated Acquisition Environment, the name GSA gives to 9 systems set for consolidation into SAM.

“We’ve had a lot of push on us from the Hill and many vendors have said to us ‘Why is it only Dun and Bradstreet?'” Turco said.

However, replacing DUNS would be no easy task, she acknowledged, since DUNS are used in financial systems to pay vendors and have become deeply integrated into IAE feeder systems.

— by David Perera, Fierce Government IT, Oct. 24, 2011 – http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/turco-sam-deployment-likely-be-delayed-gsa-might-replace-duns/2011-10-22?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

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