System for Award Management | The Contracting Education Academy

March 8, 2021 By cs

GSA to verify identities of some SAM users after transition

New capabilities being added in May to beta.SAM.gov — the General Services Administration’s consolidated procurement website — will come with new, stringent security protocols requiring certain users to verify their accounts are connected to real-world people.

On May 24, the entity registration functions of SAM.gov will be moved over to beta.SAM.gov and the latter will lose the “beta” and become the one and only SAM.gov. At that time, GSA plans to institute new security measures for entity registration — voluntary at first but mandatory come October.

As GSA consolidates all of its procurement tools into a single site, the agency has been incorporating Login.gov as the single sign-on for all of these capabilities. When the System for Award Management, or SAM, registration functions are ported over, the system will take advantage of Login’s identity proofing capability for an added layer of security.

The identity proofing — verifying that an online account is connected to a specific, real person — will be for users who manage organizations’ SAM registration, which includes the unique identifier used to reference entities receiving federal contracts and grants and all the identifiable information about that organization.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2021/02/gsa-verify-identities-some-sam-users-after-transition/172216/

February 24, 2021 By cs

GSA’s central procurement hub — SAM — will keep the ‘beta’ a little longer

Users will get a preview in April of the new SAM.gov — a central, one-stop website for all of the General Services Administration’s acquisition tools — but will have to wait a bit longer to access the full capabilities of the current SAM.gov.

Since 2017, GSA’s Integrated Award Environment has been operating two websites with the SAM moniker: the original SAM.gov, where companies and organizations register before vying for federal contracts and grants, and beta.SAM.gov, soon to be the central procurement website. Beta.SAM will ultimately consolidate 10 acquisition tools, and already includes Contract Opportunities — formerly Federal Business Opportunities, better known as FedBizOpps or FBO — and the reporting functions of the Federal Procurement Data System, or FPDS, which now reside on the Data Bank page.

The next major transition will be moving functionality from the current SAM.gov to beta.SAM, shuttering the former and dropping the “beta” from the latter. GSA officials had planned to finalize the transition before the end of April but have since revised that timeline.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2021/02/gsas-central-procurement-hub-will-keep-beta-little-longer/171951/

January 7, 2021 By cs

Failure to have active SAM registration at time of bid was not fatal

Government contractors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) and complete required representations and certifications annually.

FAR 52.204-7 requires bidders, with some limited exceptions, to be registered in SAM at the time of bid and to continue to be registered until time of award, during performance, and through final payment.

Recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) addressed the issue of whether a bidder’s failure to have an active registration in SAM at time of bid renders the bid nonresponsive and ineligible for award in Master Pavement Line Corp., B-419111 (Dec. 16, 2020).

GAO concluded that SAM registration is a matter of responsibility, not bid responsiveness.

In that case, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued an Invitation for Bids (IFB) for the repair of signs and guiderails, as well as other safety repairs. The IFB included a checklist for bid submission that advised that bidders had to be registered in SAM prior to contract award. Master Pavement submitted a timely bid and was the apparent low bidder.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cf98267d-d76e-4b8d-9df5-cc7f0ffae5bc

December 23, 2020 By cs

GSA’s SAM.gov will lose its ‘beta’ in April

The legacy SAM.gov will be shuttered and all the capabilities will be folded into the new SAM.gov, which currently goes by beta.SAM.gov.

The registration site for organizations doing business with the federal government will be migrating to the new central website for all procurement systems, allowing the latter to drop the “beta” designation and clear up some confusing nomenclature.

The System for Award Management, currently housed at SAM.gov, is used by federal contractors and grantees to register for the unique number used to identify the organization in official documents — similar to a Social Security number. The site, managed by the General Services Administration, shares a name with the agency’s developing central procurement hub, beta.SAM.gov.

GSA’s Integrated Award Environment program office has been working on consolidating all related procurement tools on a single website since 2018. The effort started with migrating the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, or CFDA, and Wage Determination Online, or WDOL, tools to beta.SAM, followed by two of the most-used acquisition tools in government.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/12/gsas-central-procurement-hub-will-lose-beta-april/170541/

December 15, 2020 By cs

OMB should lead category management efforts to improve contract data, GAO says

Efforts to improve contract data must be led by the Office of Management and Budget, if its category management initiative is to improve, according to the Government Accountability Office.

GAO found OMB‘s category management initiative focused too much on how to buy things — at the expense of helping agencies determine what goods and services they actually need — when it assessed data for 28 agencies, reviewed guidance for four and interviewed officials.

The category management initiative saved $27.3 billion in three years by having agencies use existing contracts to buy similar products and services like those in the IT Category, but billions more could be saved if OMB pursues governmentwide solutions to data challenges.

“Agency officials told GAO that data challenges — particularly challenges in collecting, analyzing, and sharing data on their spending and the prices they pay — have hindered implementation of the category management initiative,” reads GAO’s congressional report released Monday. “OMB is aware of these government-wide challenges and has directed agencies to take certain steps on their own to address them.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/omb-category-management-data/

New capabilities being added in May to beta.SAM.gov — the General Services Administration’s consolidated procurement website — will come with new, stringent security protocols requiring certain users to verify their accounts are connected to real-world people.

Users will get a preview in April of the new SAM.gov — a central, one-stop website for all of the General Services Administration’s acquisition tools — but will have to wait a bit longer to access the full capabilities of the current SAM.gov.

Government contractors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) and complete required representations and certifications annually.

The legacy SAM.gov will be shuttered and all the capabilities will be folded into the new SAM.gov, which currently goes by beta.SAM.gov.

Efforts to improve contract data must be led by the Office of Management and Budget, if its category management initiative is to improve, according to the Government Accountability Office.

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