Federal Contract Award Data from FPDS Will Be on SAM Before Spring

With FedBizOpps shuttered and shifted to beta.SAM.gov, the General Services Administration is readying for the next major transition to its centralized federal contracting site: moving the reporting function of the contract awards database, the Federal Procurement Data System, or FPDS.

By March 16, the reporting tools on fpds.gov site will be transitioned over to a new “Data Bank” page on beta.SAM.gov. Other functionality, including “search, agency reporting, data extracts, etc.,” will continue to operate on fpds.gov, according to a transition fact sheet provided by GSA.

As with the FedBizOpps transition, users will need to create an account through Login.gov, or use an existing account through that service. If users sign up for Login.gov with the same email address they used for the FPDS account, most of their saved data should transition to the new site, according to a post on GSA’s outreach site Interact.

The transition should be seamless for users who run “administrative, standard or static reports” through the current FPDS, GSA officials said. However, users who run “ad hoc reports” should take steps to ensure they will get needed information through the new Data Bank page.

“We recommend at this time that you review your current saved FPDS reports and note attributes and filters for reference in case you need to recreate a report using the new ad hoc tool in beta.SAM.gov when it becomes available,” officials wrote in the Interact blog post.

Ad hoc reports created and/or run between Jan. 1, 2019 and Jan. 31, 2020 will be converted and available on the Data Bank site. GSA expects this will cover approximately 75% of ad hoc reports.

“However, any new ad hoc reports created between February 1, 2020 and March 16, 2020 will not be transferred to the new reporting environment,” according to the fact sheet.

That said, officials suggested backing up ad hoc reports before Jan. 31 in case there are issues with the automated conversion process. The Interact post includes specific instructions for creating these backups.

After the transition, the ad hoc reporting feature will be known as “MicroStrategy,” which will have more data fields than the current site and allow users to save and share report structures, including attributes and filters. The new Data Bank site will also have a Report Builder wizard to assist.

Other improvements include increasing the number of rows per report to 150,000—up from 30,000—and the maximum number of years to 12—up from five.

While GSA officials are promising a smooth transition for the FPDS tool, the FedBizOpps migration was not seamless for many users. For the first few days after the Contracting Opportunities page launched, users were more likely to time out than reach the site. Once able to access the site, many reported difficulty finding solicitations and missing information. 

The FedBizOpps transition team has been working on these issues since the switchover, and have promised upgrades and new and returning functionality on the Contracting Opportunities site.