That's all she wrote: Agency pulls plug on Commerce Business Daily

A sign of e-government transformation, the final issue of the Department of Commerce's venerable Commerce Business Daily rolled off the Government Printing Office's presses Jan. 4.

Vendors and other interested personnel can now get word of the government's latest contract awards and solicitations on a General Services Administration-run Web site, called Federal Business Opportunities, www.fedbizopps.gov. The administration will also post a list of vendors that will offer printed versions of FedBizOpps.

That site was designated in May 2001 by changes in the Federal Acquisition Regulation code to be the governmentwide site for posting all federal procurement opportunities exceeding $25,000.

The code mandated that the Department of Commerce end publishing Commerce Business Daily Jan. 4 and for agencies to recognize "FedBizOpps as the official source for all procurement information and notices to be published," according to a Dec. 28 Department of Commerce notice.

Over the last three months, many agencies submitted notices to both Commerce Business Daily and FedBizOpps to ease the changeover.

Traditionally mailed every business workday, Commerce Business Daily provided daily notices of contract wins, solicitations and other procurement-related notices for a wide variety of agencies.

An online version, called CBDNet, ceased posting information this month as well. It will remain online to Jan. 19. After that date, the database of past procurement actions will be transferred to the Federal Depository Library Program Electronic Collection.

FedBizOpps includes procurement notices, solicitations, drawings and amendments. Eventually, agencies will also use this site to receive proposals electronically.

Vendors can check FedBizOpps for a list of new notices, sign up to automatically receive procurement information by e-mail, as well as search through active and archived procurements by solicitation number, date, procurement classification code and agency.

Individual notices will be posted on an FTP site, ftp://ftp.eps.gov, which is open to vendors as well.

Despite FedBizOpps' designation as a governmentwide point of entry, at least one other government procurement portal will remain in operation. The Defense E-Business Program Office-sponsored DodBusOpps.com will continue to offer Department of Defense procurement-related notices.

"DodBusOpps.com and FedBizOpps.gov are complementary systems. They have similar missions, but they have different scopes, and they are operated by different agencies," it said on a DodBusOpps Web page. That page also mentions that all defense opportunities listed on DodBusOpps will be forwarded to FedBizOpps.