The Central Contractor Registry (CCR) as well as the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA) web sites and facilities have given way to the federal government’s new omnibus system, the System for Award Management (SAM).
The SBIR Gateway is an information service for small business and community members by Rick Shindell of Zyn Systems
www.zyn.com/sbirUntil today, July 30, 2012 you couldn’t receive an SBIR/STTR award unless you were registered in the CCR database. From now on it becomes the SAM, located at www.sam.gov(or just plain sam.gov). This is also true for Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA) which is now closed.
SAM incorporates many of the governments databases into one, and that includes CCR and ORCA, although they no longer carry those names.
The good news is that if your company was current in the CCR, that information has been ported over to SAM. The same is not true for ORCA. As I understand it at this time, you have to update your Representations and Certifications.
SAM is currently being hammeredby users, because most government contracting programs will use this system, so expect it to be sloooow. Perhaps waiting a week or two may be advisable because it was virtually unusable today.
You cannot use your old account from CCR in SAM. You will have to go in and create an account (for most of us it will be a user account). In SAM terms your company is an “Entity” and you are an “Entity User” (sounds like a drug problem for NIH..)
If your company was current in the CCR, go to www.sam.gov and create an individual user account (this information is separate from your company’s “entity account” but if done properly will allow you to access your company’s data). When you create your user account, you will be asked “Would you like to migrate a legacy system account?” If the email address used in your CCR record is the same as the one in your user account, the transition will be a piece of cake, otherwise you’ll have to justify the difference in the email addresses.
Hit the “Yes” button to open the migrate a legacy system account, window then select the CCR before you do any others. The system will step you through the process. Then you can go in and make any changes. However, it appears that you’ll want to go to the Representations and Certifications tab and update that data (not fun…). Make sure you have your data handy.
For the “Feds” reading this, you can check on a company from the SAM even if they have not created a SAM user account. If the company was current in the CCR, it will be available in SAM. I’m not sure about how to query the Reps & Certs, but I’m sure that will come into focus soon.
Note: Look for the DoD to make a mod to their 12.3 and 12.B solicitations eliminating the references to CCR and ORCA.
Also, if your company was registered in CCR but reached its expiration date, you better get into SAM quickly and make the updates.
I’m sorry but a primer on SAM (which were are not qualified to do) is beyond the scope of the SBIR Insider, but this information is very important for all entities doing business with the government.
Source: Rick Shindell, SBIR Gateway
http://www.zyn.com/sbir/insider/sb-insider7-30-12.htm#two
