The Money Isn’t Where You Think: How to Read Federal Contract Data | Eileen Kent

So you've been in this for a very long time and you have seen the changes that have happened over the course of those many years and just these past few years that it seems the pace of change has been picking up quite a bit.

And you mentioned something there that I think we're going to talk about pretty extensively today, and that's data and that's those data sources.

So I want to start right back at the beginning.

And what tools were you using when you first jumped into federal contracting and federal education? What were the tools that were available to you at that point to do some of this research?

Early on, we always had Federal Procurement Data System.

I think that thing was around since the 80s.

If you look at it, it is very old and antiquated, but it went deep.

So you could pretty much do some searches in there.

They had an ad hoc report inside there that you could pull information.

And I would use that and teach that, which it eventually got converted over to SAM.gov, the actual ad hoc report around 2018 or so.

USA Spending was a tool that, before GSA took it over, the Treasury had it, and it was pretty good.

And then it was taken over around 2014, 2015, and it hasn't really been that good, even though people like to use that as a free tool.

The data when you download it, it's a mess.

It's every single data point, so many that you don't even need.

It's over 300 data points.

It's crazy amount of information, completely out of order.

What I like about USA Spending is is the subcontracting data.

That's a great source.

And we can talk about that later.

But early on, USA Spending was the place that I went and then I would use the ad hoc report inside FPDS.

FedBizOps was a place where you would look for bids.

Awards weren't posted there.

That's where bids were posted.

You had CCR, Central Contractor Registration, where you would put together your corporate profile and register with the federal government.

And I kind of giggled, Chelsea, because some of the agencies, their websites still use CCR.gov.