The Government Needs a Unique Numbering System to Consistently Identify Entities

February 16, 2017

GSA moves one step closer to replacing DUNS

Source: FCW.com, Mark Rockwell, February 13, 2017GSA

The General Services Administration took an important step toward reducing its reliance on a proprietary business entity identifier system in government contracting.

The agency released a request for information on Feb. 13 in advance of the possible adoption of a new numbering system for “government-wide entity identification and validation services.”

Currently the federal contracting system relies on the Data Universal Numbering System, or DUNS number, from Dun & Bradstreet.

The pitfalls associated with using a proprietary reference system first came to public attention in 2014, when a key contract covering data use on the Recovery.gov website expired, and D&B pulled its data from the site. Recovery.gov was considered at the time the gold standard for spending transparency, and the loss of rich transactional data activated many in the open government community to advocate for an open standard as a replacement. READ MORE….

The RFI is posted on FBO, and will be available for review and comment until March 13, 2017.

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