It seems like it was just yesterday that the government was shutting down ORCA and CCR and setting up the SAM government website as a centralized database for government contractors. While SAM is not changing, several other related aspects of SAM registration and government contracting are undergoing a shift.
A Brief History
In case you are unfamiliar with SAM, ORCA and CCR, here’s quick trip back in time. In the past, government contractors would sign up with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and the Online Representations and Certifications (ORCA) was basically a system that shifted registration for contracting from paper documents to an online application.
Both ORCA and CCR were enveloped by the System for Award Management (SAM) in 2012. This might seem like a long time ago, but we still see references to CCR and ORCA pop up occasionally online, so it’s just good for beginning contractors to know that CCR and ORCA aren’t something to worry about any more. It’s all about the SAM government website these days.
The DUNS Number Change
At Federal Contractor Registry, we complete SAM registrations for clients from a wide range of services. One the pieces of data we collect as we begin the registration process is your Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number. This is a unique number for your business and when companies or government agencies want to know a bit about the financial stability of your company, they might do a check using your DUNS number.
Dun & Bradstreet, a private corporation created this system back in the 1960s. For about 20 years, the federal government has used DUNS information in conjunction with government contracting. If you signed up with CCR or SAM, you had to provide your DUNS number.
Last year, the government decided to allow other companies to bid on collecting and maintaining a similar system and Dun & Bradstreet will no longer be in the picture. A new company, Ernst & Young, will be taking over and a new numbering system will be created and you will no longer need to supply your DUNS number in order to register or renew with SAM.
This new unique identifier will be known as SAMMI, which stands for SAM Managed Identifier. We aren’t sure how long it them to think up the cute little acronym, but we are sure they tossed around ideas for a few days before settling on SAMMI.
But, we digress; the important thing to remember is that this change will not be happening overnight, so if you are just getting ready for your first crack at SAM registration, you’ll just need to provide us with your DUNS number. These can be obtained, at no charge, at the Dun & Bradstreet website. It’s possible that your business already has a DUNS number, and you also can check for that on the D&B website.
At any rate, eventually, all of us will need SAMMI numbers, and these also will be given out at no charge. For now, you just need to know that this change is coming sometime in the near future, but currently, nothing has changed. Rest assured we can help you figure out how to get that SAMMI number once the time comes.
The FedBizOpps Change
FedBizOpps.gov is a website, run by the General Services Administration (GSA). Its purpose was to catalog federal contracting opportunities so that contractors to search and see what was available.
By the end of 2019, FedBizOpps no longer will be available to use, and there is actually a smart reason behind this change. In the past, there were many government websites devoted to government contracting but this could be cumbersome and confusing. So, the GSA created the System for Award Management and integrated many websites into the system.
With FedBizOpps, this system basically will be merged into SAM, creating one huge database with one single login rather than several websites with unique logins. The end result should be a more streamlined process overall for government contractors.
If you are used to FedBizOpps, the new system will look a bit different and will feature the name Contract Opportunities. It will take some time to get used to, but hopefully, having everything in one central place will make the process a bit easier and, frankly, FedBizOpps wasn’t exactly a masterpiece in government tech in the first place.
This is part of a larger migration of various systems into SAM.gov. There are still several other sites that are planned to be incorporated into SAM. The Federal Subaward Reporting System (FSRS), the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (ESRS), the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), the Past Performance Information Retrieval System, and the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) all will be either merged into SAM in some form or decommissioned.
It might interest you to know that many of these government systems are developed and maintained by private companies that have won government contracts. As we stated earlier, the DUNS system was maintained by Dun & Bradstreet, while the new SAMMI system will be maintained by Ernst & Young. Symplicity Corporation was chosen to run and maintain FedBizOpps, and IBM was awarded a contract to handle SAM operations, maintenance and migration.
At any rate, these changes don’t really affect those who currently are just signing up with SAM for the first time, but these are changes that will affect SAM registration and the government contracting process very soon.
If you’ve tried registering and working on the SAM government website, you may have noticed that SAM registration can be a difficult and frustrating process. We can help! We are a third-party registration service and we handle hundreds of SAM registrations every year for small businesses all the way up to Fortune 500 companies.
Rather than deal with the SAM government website, give us a call and let us handle this task for you. It’s just like hiring an accountant to your taxes. You could file for free, but it’s simply easier to hire a tax pro and ensure that everything is completed correctly. We are SAM pros, and can help you get through registration and get started in government contracting.