The General Services Administration awarded a $41.8 million contract to Ernst and Young LLP to provide entity validation services of federal contractors for up to five years.  The move is part of the government’s transition away from the “DUNS” identifier, which is owned by Dun and Bradstreet and has been used by the government for over 20 years to identify commercial entities with whom it does business, including contractors. Numeric identifiers are important for collecting and analyzing data and for payment and reporting systems.

The new identifier system will be owned by the government within the System for Award Management (SAM), and the Integrated Award Environment, and will be known as the SAM Managed Identifier (SAMMI).  The transition from DUNS to SAMMI is expected to be done by 2020. DUNS numbers will still be in use during parts of the change.

~From Set-Aside Alert 3-29-19