he General Services Administration is moving right along in its plans to consolidate eight procurement systems into one, expecting to transition a couple of key ones this winter.
I reported in February about the System for Award Management, more affectionately known as SAM, and how it would ultimately make life easier for contractors by (for one thing) allowing them to log in and enter their information into one online system rather than many. Here's the latest on where the effort stands:
Capability will be made available to users via SAM in stages, according to the GSA's website on the initiative, starting with the Central Contractor Registration that maintains company data and the Excluded Parties List System that tracks companies and individuals suspended or debarred from doing business with federal government. (The latter actually has a notice on the website stating that migration will be happening over the coming months). This first grouping of systems is scheduled to transition to SAM in the first half of 2012.
So beyond the obvious advantages for those that access these databases regularly, who might be affected? The GSA included a bit of a warning for "owners of interfacing systems" on its website, saying that the configuration of current data feeds will change. Generally this applies to those within federal government that have agency-specific applications that access these databases to run automated checks and updates when awarding contracts.
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