Any business engaged in government contracting —large or small, public or private, for-profit or non-profit—depends on the Dun & Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System, or DUNS. However, the General Service Administration’s (GSA’s) half-century reliance on the Dun & Bradstreet reference system may be coming to an end. It’s like saying goodbye to the Dewey Decimal.

WHAT DUNS DOES

In the simplest terms, a business’s DUNS number is its federal fingerprint, its social security number. The DUNS number helps the government “to track its business with contractors, from pre-award to post-award, in GSA’s System for Award Management,” explains FedScoop’s Billy Mitchell. The government is so completely reliant, in fact, on the DUNS number, that organizations can’t do business with the federal government without one. And that’s pretty good business. Getting a DUNS number is free, and with a single, enduring reference number identifying a business, both the government and the public can see exactly who is spending how much with whom on what. That’s transparency.

TRANSPARENCY

But when the public thinks transparency, it’s thinking—and demanding—complete transparency. When it comes to government contracting, complete transparency means free and unfettered access to data and other information related to business transactions with the United States. With Dun & Bradstreet, however, the information isn’t free. While obtaining a DUNS number is free, accessing business information stored by Dun & Bradstreet isn’t. You have to pay for it. Some argue that the pay to play isn’t real transparency. Access is to one degree or another restricted to those who can pay. The information isn’t public information at all. It’s proprietary. Dun & Bradstreet own it and control it.

DUNS EVOLUTION

The migration away from DUNS dependency has been gaining traction for a while. “Last September, GSA updated its Dun & Bradstreet contract to allow agency acquisition personnel and contractors wider latitude to use standardized company information for purposes beyond mere identification,” writes Government Executive’s Charles S. Clark. “In addition, both the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the regulations in Title Two of the Code of Federal Regulations have been revised to delete proprietary references to Dun & Bradstreet and DUNS.” And long before that in 2012, as Mitchell explains, the Data Act—“which requires use of such a unique entity identifier to track federal spending”—so far expanded the function of DUNS that its demise in a transparent government was inevitable.

OPPORTUNITY

The Dun & Bradstreet contract with the government is coming to an end in 2018, and GSA’s intends to solicit for new contracts to identify and track businesses. Last week, GSA published Solicitation ID15170001 for Entity Validation Services to “gather feedback from vendors and other parties interested in providing governmentwide entity identification and validation services at the expiration of the current contract.”

While that may be the death knell for DUNS, it may be opportunity for new data management solutions.

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.