WHAT: The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has officially transitioned the System for Award Management (SAM.gov) to no longer use data universal numbering system (DUNS) numbers from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), and now will use government-issued Unique Entity IDs.

WHEN: GSA implemented the change effective April 4, 2022.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR INDUSTRY: For now, most government contractors and their SAM.gov entity administrators do not need to do anything to make the change from DUNS number to automatically assigned Unique Entity ID until it is time to renew their SAM registration. If the contractor needs to know its new ID, it can find it on its SAM.gov profile. Entity administrators can also log into SAM.gov and visit their Workspace to find the IDs under their administration, which is necessary if the company opted to make its registration non-public. New entities will be automatically assigned an ID.

DUNS numbers are not going away entirely just yet. Although SAM.gov will no longer use DUNS, other government databases (such as the SBA’s certify.SBA.gov portal) still refer to DUNS, and your teaming partners may be slower to transition to the new ID (such as for their vendor registration portals).

Finally, with the retirement of DUNS in SAM.gov, changed name and address information will no longer flow from D&B. Instead, entity administrators will need to login and use the “Create Incident” option to make these changes through the Federal Service Desk. As in the past, before making such changes in SAM.gov, contractors with active government contracts should ensure they have the proper paperwork for CAGE Code verification, such as executed change-of-name agreements or notations.