Making it easier to do business with the federal government

The GSA’s cloud-based Integrated Award Environment (IAE) is a suite of systems that manages the federal awards lifecycle. One of those systems—the System for Award Management, or SAM.gov—is an essential part of this process. When the site needed to be modernized, GSA partnered with ICF to enhance data quality and improve efficiency without sacrificing usability.

Challenge

Contractors and other organizations rely on SAM.gov to register their entities, search for federal contract opportunities, and apply for federal grants. On the government side, SAM.gov is how agencies can ensure an individual or entity is eligible to receive federal funds. SAM.gov sees nearly 100 million searches by government and civilian users per year, so it was essential that the site remain secure and accessible throughout the modernization effort.

Solution

ICF deployed six development teams to support the SAM.gov digital modernization efforts. Through Scaled Agile Framework development processes, we simplified the legacy website to enable modular development and product releases through smaller teams. Key parts of the modernization were:

• Designing and implementing a sitewide CMS that enables GSA editors to update content without making code changes.
• Enabling natural language-based search to optimize workflows.
• Operationalizing functionality that allows users to opt in to notifications when new contract opportunities meet their search criteria.

Results

The new SAM.gov offers enhanced operational efficiency on several fronts:

• Iterative development allows GSA to push necessary updates faster while reducing dependencies and potential defects.
• The new CMS enables real-time content updates, ensuring SAM.gov users have access to the most accurate data.
• Natural language-based searching helps users perform precise searches and retrieve more relevant results.
• The Saved Search Email Notification functionality can dispatch 80,000 emails, increasing efficiency over the legacy site by about 25%.
• Transitioning SAM.gov’s search indexing to a more flexible architecture reduced reliance on proprietary tools and lowered licensing costs.

This modernization effort helped establish a more resilient, user-centered digital foundation for SAM.gov—supporting GSA’s ability to manage the federal awards lifecycle with greater efficiency, accuracy, and scale.