“The General Services Administration won’t require anyone to use the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) reports function within beta.SAM.gov until the end of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
“FPDS.gov tracks all federal contracts of $10,000 or more, and its reporting module uses transactional data from procurements in ad hoc, standard and static reports.”
“The Integrated Award Environment office at GSA began moving its reports function to beta.SAM.gov on Feb. 1 but is now calling it a soft launch.”
“’We want to require the FPDS reports by the end of this year,’ said Vicky Niblett, deputy assistant commissioner at IAE, during an ACT-IAC virtual session. ‘I will say we had wanted to do it sooner, but with COVID-19 and what we heard from our users, we are now targeting a little bit closer to the end of the year.’”
“IAE learned it needs to give the contracting community more lead time into transitions because there is a ‘large’ learning curve using the new ad hoc report tool, MicroStrategy (not to be confused with the business intelligence company). The migration to beta.SAM.gov’s Data Bank was slated for completion on March 16, but for now, FPDS.gov users can continue creating reports there — though they won’t transfer…”
“FPDS.gov is one of 10 procurement systems that will eventually be merged into the cloud-based IAE, a process that’s met criticism from federal contractors. The Professional Services Council — a trade association of 400 members like Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems and Microsoft — wrote GSA in February recommending authentication, saved search, email update, and design improvements to beta.SAM.gov.”
“GSA acknowledged the negative feedback…” Read the full article here.
Source: GSA extends procurement data reports transition due to coronavirus, feedback – By Dave Nyczepir, May 5, 2020. FedScoop.