Column: The USASpending.gov website has changed--to the detriment of small business.

by Eileen Kent, Federal Sales Sherpa

USASpending.gov has been an outstanding tool for new federal contractors to quickly identify who buys what they sell. Whether small business used it or not, it was available for savvy small businesses to quickly identify “hot spots” of agencies who buy what they sell without leaving their office – for free.

It allowed a user – a taxpayer – to type in a keyword, like “Hard drive” or “MRI” or “Generator” and USASpending.gov would quickly bubble up the data in a wide variety of ways to look at the info. It would show about twenty top agencies, vendors, specific PSC and NAICS codes, and you could select any year from 2001 – on. Then, you could click on a particular agency – drill to a specific vendor – or an exact NAICs code – or any combination of those choices.

Then there was the “secret sauce” – the ability to EXPORT the data – into a spreadsheet which provided the data elements of absolutely every transaction. In fact there were data elements which would show a user: Dollars spent, Base and Option Years, Major Agency, Mod Agency, Contracting Office ID, Financing Office ID, Start Date, Completion Date, Last Date, Contract Description, Vendor Info, Number of Bids, Whether or not it was Posted on FBO, the original Solicitation Number, the transaction’s NAICs Code and PSC Code, whether it was a Set Aside, a Sole Source, Fair and Open Competition, and the type of Indefinite Delivery Vehicle (GSA Schedule-Or Other Contract)….You could see whether the Vendor was a Small, Veteran Owned, Woman Owned, Service Disabled Veteran Owned, 8a, Minority, Hub Zone, Tribal or more…..

There are many other data elements offered – too many to list here – but all of this was available to review, read, consider and drill – drill – drill to the exact agencies who bought what was sold by whom and how. This data helped a small business – saving them years of phone calls or travel in the field gathering intelligence –which may not communicated by their federal potential prospects - with as much accuracy.

For example, a woman-owned small business was told by her federal customer that he bought services on GSA schedule. With his information, she invested of her own time to apply for - and get approved for the GSA Schedule - and then spent another two years waiting for the orders to come through GSA - which never came...putting her schedule in jeopardy for lack of sales.

When she hired me to look at the data for her on the old USASpending.gov, I could immediately determine that her client never used a GSA Schedule to buy her specific service from her competitors and in fact, had an IDIQ for those services coming to an end. Her client was using a canned answer “I use GSA Schedules” basically to make her go away. He didn’t realize he sent her down a four-year costly trail of $0 federal business. The old USASpending.gov website had this data...the new USASpending.gov has it too, but it’s much more time consuming and difficult to find it without the keyword search and export capabilities.

The old USASpending.gov tool also saved small businesses tens of thousands in subscription fees available by contractors such as GovWin, EZGovOps, GovPurchase, BidSpeed, WinBids and GovTribe re-purposing and selling this data.

Whether or not USASpending.gov was used – it gave a curious and smart strategic company at least a fighting chance in the business. It also gave the government’s own consultants at SBA and Procurement Technical Assistance Centers – the ability to provide quick consulting to their local small businesses.

Those days are over.

The new USASpending.gov – does not allow for keyword search and the download capabilities either don’t offer enough information – or too much for one person to download.

For example, if you search by your competitor – you can only download about 6-10 columns worth of data – which is basic at best. Then, when you’ve identified a specific contract transaction you’d like to really study at a granular level, you need to click about six times to get the whole story as the data is tucked under different headings. It’s there, but it’s very labor intensive to look at the info - transaction-by-transaction. It’s much easier when you can download all your competitor’s contracts and sort by agency, description, NAICs codes and more, but you can’t do that anymore with this version of USASpending.gov.

If you want to download the data at a granular level as described above, the new USASpending.gov makes it available – by agency – but the data element is so large that the system either says it’s too much data to download – or asks you to specify agency buying office – defeating the purpose of finding out who buys what you sell because now you have to guess which office which will take you forever to download and decipher.

Now, there are some of us who know how to dip into the original source of this data at http://www.fpds.gov - and help with a detailed competitive analysis – for a cost – and because we have been selling to the federal government and teaching people how to sell to the government, and looking at the data for years, we know what agencies to consider first, but this data should be available in the attractive format USASpending.gov offered to the public as it was – before.

So, USASpending.gov new management - on behalf of over 600,000 SAM.gov registrants not willing to sit on our certifications and wait for the opportunities to come to us — please prioritize the addition of KEYWORD Search Term, the ability to DRILL by specific Agencies, Years, Vendors, NAICS and PSC Codes – the ability to EXPORT the data based on our drilled search – including contract DESCRIPTIONS.

We’re not asking for much - we’re just asking for you to bring back the transparent data the federal government has made available to taxpayers for the last five years.

Thank you for your consideration.

Eileen Kent is a consultant, speaker and radio host known as the Federal Sales Sherpa. Her website is http://federalsalessherpa.com.

Outcry over USASpending.gov website redo

Weighing in on mentor-proteges

GSA: schedules need transformation

Column: The USASpending.gov website has changed--to the detriment of small business.

Washington Insider: