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Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 10/13/03 issue

Sole source: FedBizOpps portal sets standard for integrated government

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

What began life as a small electronic-procurement pilot at NASA has grown into an e-government giant.

The program is Federal Business Opportunities, better known as FedBizOpps, a governmentwide procurement portal that exemplifies the Bush administration’s vision for integrated, cross-agency government.

Since last year, FedBizOpps, at www.fedbizopps.gov, has been the government’s official site for listing and finding solicitations valued at $25,000 or more.

About 100 federal agencies post notices on FedBizOpps, and more than 400,000 registered vendors search the site for contract opportunities. In a recent month, the site, which is searchable by solicitation number, date, procurement classification code and agency, got 32 million hits.
Stuart Dvorkin
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“Within an hour of posting, the entire [vendor] community has access, whether it’s a major multinational corporation or a small mom-and-pop shop.”

—FedBizOpps’ Stuart Dvorkin
“We’re like pioneers,” said Stuart Dvorkin, FedBizOpps program manager for the General Services Administration’s Federal Supply Service, which runs the portal. “The whole idea of the [Quicksilver] e-gov intiatives and the President’s Management Agenda is to do away with agency-specific applications and duplication. In FedBizOpps you have a governmentwide application that satisfies the requirements of all these diverse agencies with diverse needs and interests.”

FedBizOpps’ predecessor was the Government Printing Office’s Commerce Business Daily—a hard-copy publication with crinkly yellow paper and tiny, box-score-size type—and Commerce Business Daily Net, a rudimentary electronic version.

In addition, some agencies had their own Web sites for posting contract notices, such as the Defense Department’s BusOpps site.

FedBizOpps began its own life in the mid-1990s as an agency-specific project at NASA called the Electronic Posting System. But its potential for wider use was recognized early on, and GSA took over the project in 1998.

In a February 1999 report on the program, the General Accounting Office extolled EPS’ prospects as a cross-government electronic posting system.

GAO described the system as “a simple, effective and user-friendly system for disseminating information on contracting opportunities.”

The congressional watchdog also said that the system had contributed to development of a more streamlined agency acquisition process.

More news on related topics: E-Government, IT in Action, Web Strategies, The Community