GSA to charge fee to access buying data via the Web

The General Services Administration late last month set a one-time fee of $2,500 for vendors and the public to receive a direct, continuous Web feed from the new Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation.The data will remain free for those who get the information via File Transfer Protocol or who perform ad hoc or prewritten queries of the database, GSA detailed in the interim rule published in the Federal Register. [To read the announcement, go to and enter 347 in the Quickfind search box.]The fee will “partially cover the cost of technical support, testing and certification of direct integration to the FPDS Web services,” GSA said in the notice.GSA said it will restrict access to the database during peak hours, depending on the level of demand and the system’s ability to meet all users’ needs.“We expect that nearly all of the public users will use the free data and report generation tools that will also be available,” GSA noted. “The public will use the same report generating tools as federal employees to access the database.”