Procurement Database to be Upgraded Global Computer Enterprises Inc., a small firm based in Gaithersburg, MD, has been awarded a $24.4 million contract to upgrade the government’s procurement database. GCE won the award in a full and open competition. An SBA procurement center representative had recommended that the contract be competed as a small business set-aside, but GSA and SBA refused to go along, said Rep. Nydia Velazquez (R-NY), ranking minority member of the House Small Business Committee. Velazquez said most of the bidders for the contract were small firms and under the “rule of two,” it should have been set aside. That “really impacted the credibility of SBA,” she said at a May 7 hearing. “A small business got the contract in spite of (SBA’s) actions.” GSA’s Federal Procurement Data System has been widely criticized for inaccuracies in its official tabulations of contract data. Some agencies say figures reported by FPDS often don’t jibe with their own totals, even though the FPDS data is submitted by the agencies. The current system requires manual data input, which is notoriously prone to error. The new system to be developed by GCE will be designed to “reduce the data entry requirement…to nearly zero,” GSA said. GSA said it hopes to cut transaction costs from nearly $40 per transaction to under $1, saving $8 million-$10 million a year.