Anyone trying to get detailed information on federal contracts and contractors knows that the federal government databases with the information each come with some sort of caveat, whether it is about content scope or search issues. Related information is stored in unconnected databases, and using them is tedious.
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee bravely investigated the situation in a hearing on 29 September 2009. They even got down to the professional searcher level of detail, discussing why, as GAO's prepared testimony revealed, "a party listed as 'Company XYZ, Inc.' in [the Excluded Parties List System] would not be identified if an agency left out the comma in the name and instead conducted a search for 'Company XYZ Inc.' "
The archived webcast of the hearing, Improving Transparency and Accessibility of Federal Contracting Databases, is available from the committee's Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.
GAO's testimony, Federal Contracting: Observations on the Government's Contracting Data Systems (GAO-09-1032T), includes summaries of the three databases they evaluated.
If all of this is too dry for you, check out techPresident's fun report on the hearing, Looking Through a Window Into a Room Full of Junk (A Capitol Hill Sketch).
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