Efficient award management for approximately 670,000 companies conducting business with the U.S. Government requires a D-U-N-S Number and critical business information on contractors, loan recipients and grantees. This robust entity management/MDM system determines past performance while facilitating oversight and electronic payments.
Program Mission
The mission of the General Services Administration (GSA) is to deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to government and the American people. More specifically in regards to acquisition, the Integrated Award Environment (IAE) is a Presidential E-Government initiative managed by GSA. Their mission is to use innovative processes and technologies to improve systems and operations for those who award, administer, or receive federal financial assistance (i.e. grants, loans), contracts, and intergovernmental transactions.
Evolving Challenges
The primary challenge for GSA and the IAE is to make federal financial assistance management and tracking systems function in a better, more cost-effective manner – ensuring that government is able to evaluate their awardees as well as pay entities in a timely manner.
In 1994, GSA was further challenged to transition from paper-based processes to electronic commerce, impacting millions of government employees and hundreds of thousands of businesses that partner with the government. The Federal Electronic Commerce Acquisition Team – comprised of 60 subject matter experts across government – conducted a study to evaluate options for the Federal Government’s Contractor Identification Code (CIC) to streamline procurement through electronic commerce. Among its goals, the government sought to ensure the accurate and timely identification of responsible Federal award partners, which was considered essential to both the integrity of Federal awarding processes and the best use of taxpayer dollars. The key to achieving these benefits was establishing a unique entity identifier that, among other things, would verify entity information, location, past performance, integrity data, incorporation information – and facilitate payment and transparency. With a robust unique entity identifier, the government could centralize the registration process around a single authoritative entity record, and designate standard information and processes for business and government.
The demands on the IAE are constantly changing and evolving from operational requirements surrounding award management, to intergovernmental transactions, grants management, and transparency reporting. This new demand requires critical corporate linkage information. Increasingly, there is a call for transparent data to become open data – and to make data more accessible and readily available across government.
The Solution
Dun & Bradstreet has partnered with the Government since the 1970s, and this longstanding relationship for data collection has supported responsible award decisions using taxpayer dollars as well as provided insights into federal government spending. Contract, grant, loan and other spending activity reported in GSA’s IAE is organized by Dun & Bradstreet information and the D-U-N-S Number.
This award management system has evolved over the years to meet emerging needs from its original purpose of entity management to award management to accountability and transparency. This complex solution includes components across multiple dimensions including:
- Foundational, firmographic data to enable business verification, including the D-U-N-S Number
- Corporate linkage data to enable spend transparency
- Global business verification services at the point of entry to ensure the company is who they say they are
- Data governance and data quality to ensure critical decisions are based on the most accurate information available
- Entity matching and integration of entities into government systems
- Customization for government processes as needs develop
- Dedicated team of associates, handling inquiries from government and awardees
- Program management to ensure the government and taxpayer gets the maximum value
Since the 2014 implementation of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), the nation’s first open data law, federal agencies have been busy focusing on ways to make data even more transparent throughout the federal space. GSA is heavily involved in these activities, and with that in mind, recently renegotiated Dun & Bradstreet’s contract to incorporate an important change to the way the federal government is able to use the proprietary Dun & Bradstreet data obtained through the IAE systems. The key contractual changes included:
- Expanded Use for Federal Government to eliminate barriers of use within government for Dun & Bradstreet-sourced data distributed by the IAE, opening up data use to any federal agency for their business analysis purposes
- Perpetual Retention to eliminate the requirement to remove Dun & Bradstreet-sourced content from government systems if another party takes over Dun & Bradstreet’s support role, eliminating a potentially enormous costly and burdensome transitional challenge
- Commercial Re-use to allow third-parties to access and use a subset of Dun & Bradstreet data for commercial use
Dun & Bradstreet information can be used for other activities, like compiling research of historical procurement information and conducting trend and spend analysis. The expansion of these data rights assists agencies in making better-informed, data-driven decisions as they strive to meet their missions and enable innovation and entrepreneurship in the commercial sector with high quality Dun & Bradstreet data.
Results and ROI
The development and deployment of a global award management process for the US Government has been an important and significant effort. GSA working with Dun & Bradstreet has ensured data integrity and delivered operational efficiency and significant improvement in the reliability of procurement systems and processes.
The government now has a world-class, efficient, and continuously improving award management system in place today. And after the most recent contract renegotiations, GSA commended Dun & Bradstreet leadership for their dedication to decisions that are good for government and good for the American taxpayer.
Dun & Bradstreet in partnership with GSA remains committed to the business of government and award management as well as continuous improvement and superior service for the government.
Sources
GSA and Dun & Bradstreet renegotiate contract to increase data availability and transparency
Final Report: Streamlining Procurement Through Electronic Commerce (Federal Electronic Commerce Acquisition Team) October 13, 1994
Dun & Bradstreet Response to FAR Case 2015, Feb 22
System for Award Management (SAM) Extract FY12-14
U.S. Government Finalizes Standards for Massive Federal-Spending Dataset