FPDS looks old and clunky but that only masks its power

There’s been a recent trend on Instagram targeted towards millennial moms. As I scroll through my social media feed, videos pop up with a familiar, slightly unfocused grain. I see posts with NERF guns, small TVs with built-in VHS players, and landline phones.

The messaging begs women my age to give their kids a 90’s childhood, just like the ones we had.

There’s a specific nostalgic aesthetic surrounding anything built in the 1990s, and in GovCon, that feeling of a simpler time is wholly visible in the user interface and design of FPDS.gov.

The Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation serves as a time capsule dedicated to the form and function of a tool built in the Spice Girls age. From the classic static navigation to the search bar where you have to delete the prompt to use it (“Google-like search to help you find federal contracts...”), the look and feel of this primary source of contract information leaves a lot to be desired.

I won’t sugarcoat it – he ain’t pretty – and he hasn’t been for a long time.

Regardless of looks, he’s a powerhouse repository, and contains millions of subpages connected to specific contract actions all presented in the familiar tabular format: Transaction Information, Document Information, Dates, Amounts, Purchaser Information, Entity Information, Socio Economic Data, Contract Data, Legislative Mandates, Principal Place of Performance, Product Or Service Information, Competition Information, and Preference Programs / Other Data.

The above list makes it seem like it’s a wealth of information, and in truth it is…if (and it’s a big if) you know how to use the tool effectively.

Step one is to maneuver around seemingly forgotten relics. Every click derives a fun game of avoiding out-of-date information, such as the note stating, “You must click 'here' for very important D&B information” …even though DUNS numbers went the way of the dodo bird four years ago.

Step two is to access the data. The Advanced Search feature feels like an “if-then” math problem in the absolute worst way. Users need to determine their front of funnel – aka what is the widest intake point to filter down the search results.

Once you generate a list of contract actions matching your criteria, it’s time to sort said results by Contract Type, Agency Code, Agency Full Name,  Date Signed,  Contracting Agency ID,  Contracting Agency Name,  Department Full Name,  Action Obligation ($), NAICS, PSC,  Entity State,  Entity ZIP Code,  PoP Country Name,  PoP State Name,  Local Area Set Aside,  Treasury Account Symbol,  Non-Government Dollars, and  Contract Fiscal Year.

Once you remember the differences between sorting by ascending or descending categories, you can finally start perusing – one browser tab at a time.

If having 20+ emotional support tabs open isn’t your style, FPDS does give you the option to export your search results to csv.

Instead of the whole kid & kaboodle on the subpages, the spreadsheet view provides the following fields: Contract ID, Reference IDV, Modification Number, Transaction Number, Award/IDV Type, Action Obligation ($), Date Signed, Solicitation Date, Contracting Agency ID, Contracting Agency, Contracting Office Name, PSC Type, PSC, PSC Description, NAICS, NAICS Description, Entity City, Entity State, Entity ZIP Code, Additional Reporting Code, Additional Reporting Description, Unique Entity ID, Ultimate Parent Unique Entity ID, Ultimate Parent Legal Business Name, Legal Business Name, and CAGE Code.

If it sounds like I’m complaining about FPDS and looking forward to the final nail in the coffin on legacy procurement systems from the BS (Before SAM) era, then you don’t understand my love language at all. The system is scheduled to be decommissioned on Feb. 24.The site will then direct people to Sam.gov.

I for one will be devastated to see FPDS disintegrate into the interweb ether for a few reasons:

1) Transitioning these systems loses legacy data. When FBO.gov said its final goodbye, we lost 20+ years of publicly available SOWs/RFPs and contract postings. In an industry where procurement methods come back into style in a cyclical fashion, history is an imperative data point for business developers.

2) I still don’t like SAM.gov. There I said it. New systems tend to prioritize short attention spans and immediate gratification and logic overlays to do the work for you. For real researchers, we’d rather have ugly and robust over bareboned online minimalism.

3) The tools aren’t the real problem…not really. The policies and practices are what should be fixed first. What are the contract reporting requirements? Why are they there? How transparent can and should we be when it pertains to our federal contracts?

I fear FPDS is a symptom of larger problems that would require the government and industry to take a good hard look in the mirror.

Of course, we will have to wait and see. Until them, I will live in a perpetual “90’s summer” –riding my bike to play kick-the-can in the cul-de-sac, playing flashlight tag without a cell phone, and searching for historic contract actions on FPDS.gov.