On May 29, 2012, Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and Online Representations and Certifications (ORCA) are scheduled to undergo a revolutionary change. Both of these federal vendor registration services will be replaced by a new system called SAM – System for Award Management. SAM is being managed by the General Services Administration – GSA.
Over a period of the next several years, SAM will consolidate nine government databases.
What this means to vendors:
Your existing CCR and ORCA registrations are scheduled to be automatically transferred to SAM on May 29th.
While GSA hopes for a smooth transition to the new SAM system, there likely will be some hiccups. During the transition, difficulties can be expected with new registrations and re-registrations. Since CCR contains over 600,000 active registrants, annual re-registrations alone average about 2,000 per business day. Even a small glitch could backlog the help desk, and with 2,000 daily updates, a backlog of problems has the potential to grow very quickly.
What you should do:
Check the expiration date of your current CCR and ORCA registrations. If either of your registrations are scheduled to expire in the next few months (May, June, July), we advise you to renew your registrations now.
Taking care of your registration renewal now will allow you to avoid getting caught-up in the rush of renewals and new registrations that are sure to occur in late May and in the months of June and July.
To check your CCR expiration date, just go to https://www.bpn.gov/ccr, click on “CCR Search” near the top of the screen, and enter your DUNS number or CAGE code to review your registration. You can check your ORCA registration by going to https://orca.bpn.gov/ and entering your DUNS number. If you are due to renew either of these registration systems any time between now and the end of the year, we urge you log in and update your CCR and ORCA registration before the end of this month (May 2012). Your updated registrations will be good for one year.
Taking action now will assure that you will not have a critical need to update your records until well after any system transition problems are solved.
A fact sheet on the new SAM system can be downloaded here: SAM Flyer 2012
Does this mean everyone now needs a GSA Contract? Is GSA trying to corner the market on the need for GSA contracts to do business with the govt? Won't the costs to the govt go up if this is so???
ReplyDelete