Not Everyone Will Be Posting Opportunities to the FedBizOpps Replacement

After Veterans Day weekend, federal agencies will no longer be able to post their procurements to Federal Business Opportunities, or FBO.gov, as the General Services Administration migrates those capabilities to a tab under beta.SAM.gov. Not every agency will transition immediately.

At least one contracting office, the Federal Aviation Administration’s headquarters office, won’t be posting to the Contract Opportunities page on SAM. The office posted an announcement Thursday on its own procurement site, FAA Contract Opportunities, telling vendors to check that site going forward.

“The FBO transition to beta.SAM.gov is scheduled for Nov. 8-11, 2019, and FAA contract opportunities are not currently planned to transition to beta.SAM.gov,” contracting officers said. “This is an interim notification and FAA anticipates resolution of system compatibility issues to allow for publication to beta.SAM.gov in the future.”

GSA is shuttering FBO and transitioning it to beta.SAM.gov as part of a wholesale consolidation of its contracting websites under a single domain. The beta site has already absorbed the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, or CFDA, and the Wage Determinations Online, or WDOL, capabilities. FBO is next on deck, with the transition scheduled to begin Nov. 8 and be wrapped up—with FBO closed for business—by Nov. 12.

Ten sites will make the move to SAM, including the Federal Procurement Data System, or FPDS, and the Contractor Performance Assessment Reports System, or CPARS.

For the FBO transition, GSA is changing a number of data fields, including new definitions for some user roles and a shift in taxonomy to allow for more granulated searches. In order to make the migration, federal contracting offices have to ensure the data structures they use internally map to the new site.

FAA plans to make the transition eventually, but won’t be able to get there by Nov. 12.

“FAA is currently testing compatibility of procurement field entries with those required for beta.SAM to assess potential transition and use of beta.SAM for announcement of FAA contract opportunities,” the notice states. “In the interim, and as always, the official site for FAA contract opportunity announcements can be found at https://faaco.faa.gov/index.cfm/announcement/search.”

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct GSA's migration timeline.