Fulfilling the Promise of e-Gov Initiatives—Part II: the integration of federal acquisition processes has already improved services—and the near future looks even brighter

Public Manager, The, Winter, 2007 by Lisa Cliff, Judy Steele

EPLS is a highly visible tool under IAE, receiving more than nine million hits in May 2007.A new release of EPLS offers enhanced searching, reporting, and downloading capabilities, as well as additional features and functionalities requested by the user community. One of the major changes is that use of the DUNS number is mandatory to facilitate searches and enable interface with CCR. An XML interface is also planned.

Federal Procurement Data System

The Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS, www.fpds.gov) is the central repository of detailed information on federal contract actions over $3,000.FPDS has been transformed into an integrated business process, receiving contract accomplishment data in real time from agency contract-writing systems. FPDS reports on contract accomplishment data in a self-service model throughout the federal enterprise (see FAR Part 4.6).

Accurate and dependable data entry in FPDS is critical because it is the chief repository for acquisition information. Paul Denett, Administrator, Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), recently issued a memo making each chief acquisition officer responsible for the accuracy of the data and for establishing routine verification processes to ensure that accuracy. FPDS will also be a source for data for the new online Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) database, making accurate data even more crucial. FFATA requires that OMB establish a free, public, online database containing disclosure of federal award information to increase transparency of government spending to the public. An FFATA pilot program is under way for subcontracting data; contracts, grants, and loan data will follow.

FPDS continues to evolve to respond to the growing needs of the government user community and the general public. Today, everything is self-service, and contract-writing systems report directly into FPDS. Reporting is in real time, on demand. Users have a greater ability to submit information and receive reports quickly. In 2006, more than eight million federal civilian contract actions worth more than $400 billion were posted. The civilian agency integration process has been a success: about sixty-five departments and agencies now report data directly to FPDS, which has more than one hundred thousand users. During fiscal year 2007, DoD also became fully integrated in real time with FPDS. Several feeder systems have been shut down since this integration.

Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System

The Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS,www.esrs.gov) is the newest member of the IAE family and satisfies the need of vendors for a single point of data entry. ESRS streamlines reporting of small business subcontracting activity by large federal prime contracts. It also makes it much easier for agencies to monitor whether prime contractors are fulfilling their mandatory subcontracting plans. This Web-based tool eliminates the need for paper submissions and processing of the SF 294, Individual Subcontracting Report, and SF 295, Summary Subcontracting Report. Previously, a major contractor might have to fill out numerous paper forms and send them to multiple offices in an agency and to multiple agencies. Now, the data are entered electronically, the government sees them online as soon as entered, and the base information is reused in multiple reports.