In an effort to improve how vendors do business with the federal government, the General Service Administration (GSA) announced it will be consolidating ten federal websites into one single site. The sites that will be merged include:
- System for Award Management (SAM.gov)
- Federal Business Opportunities (FBO.gov)
- Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS.gov)
- Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS.gov)
- Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS.gov)
- Wage Determinations OnLine (WDOL.gov)
- Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS.gov)
- Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG.gov.)
- Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA.gov)
- Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (FSRS.gov)
The new site that will deliver all the services currently provided by these sites is beta.sam.gov. Currently, the fourth site that is in the process of transitioning to beta.sam.gov is FedBizOpps (FBO). The FBO will be fully transitioned to beta.sam.gov by November 2019. The FBO allows vendors to find federal bid opportunities and set up watch lists for updates on contract opportunities.
The new FBO site will have all the same capabilities as the old site, but promises to be a big improvement over the FedBizOpps site, boasting a more user-friendly environment when searching for bids. Vendors can find bids in the section named “Contract Opportunities” and will be able to search for bids by number, keyword or location. Vendors will also be able to access previous versions of bid notices and set up notices to receive updates about any bid. By consolidating the federal websites into one site, vendors will be able to use a single login and access every database from one location.
If you have already registered your business on Sam.gov, the entity registration will be automatically transferred over to the beta.sam.gov site along with historical contract data; however, you will need to create a new account on beta.sam.gov as your account details from FedBizOpps will not be transferred. Also, any notices you have set up on FBO will not be transferred, so you’ll be required to set those up again once you create a new account. For any vendors who have yet to register their business, you will need to do so at Sam.gov.
(Source: 2019. Gsa.federalschedules.com. FBO is Moving – a beta.SAM Update. 17 Sept. 2019)
The Benefits of Using a Bid Intelligence Service
Although the consolidation of all these federal websites will make it easier for vendors to manage all their accounts and to do business with the federal government, there are still many benefits to using a bid service such as BidNet to help your business find more targeted bid opportunities. The beta.sam.gov site will give vendors more options to search for bids than the FedBizOpps site did, but with BidNet, vendors receive daily notices with specific bid opportunities listed that match the products or services their business sells. BidNet’s team of experts searches and filters bids based on business’ product and service codes and sends a summary of bid opportunities (along with any pertinent information such as proposal due dates, pre-bid conferences and inquiry submissions) as well as the bid documents and contract specs, amendments, and agency contact information to vendor members for review. Equipped with this information in the form of a daily Bid Alert® Bulletin, BidNet members have more time to write winning proposals for the bids they want to win.
