More than 10,500 existing vendors and 942 new contractors are expected to benefit from the General Services Administration’s decision not to require entities that update or create their registration on the System for Award Management website to submit a notarized letter before activation of their registration, Federal News Radio reported Monday.
GSA will still require vendors to send those notarized letters to the federal service desk within 30 days of activation and will implement multi-factor authentication for registered SAM.gov users through Login.gov starting Friday, June 29, in an effort to build up security and deter fraud.
The agency announced the move this month in response to a third-party fraudulent activity on SAM.gov in March.
A spokeswoman for GSA said the agency has started to process annual renewals and entity registrations on a daily basis.
“The introduction and use of notarized letter templates has increased the acceptance rate and is the recommended process,†the spokeswoman said.
“GSA’s Integrated Award Environment is rapidly deploying SAM system enhancements to mitigate against the identified fraud threats. Our focus has been to reduce the registration processing time for those entities who are registering solely to seek federal assistance,†she added.