Government Contractors: Research US Federal Government Contract Awards

If you’re interested in knowing which contracts were awarded to US federal government contractors, there’s an app for that. Actually, there are several. Here’s the first one: https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/index.php/en. Once you get there, just type the vendor name into the “ezSearch” box.

FOIA Request Not Required

There was a time when you had to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to get contract award data from the US Federal Government. Now you can simply go to the Federal Procurement Data System – Next Generation and perform a search using an interface similar to any leading commercial search engine. You can search by the name of the government contractors, the name of the contract or project, and a whole host of other procurement data.

FPDS is Not Your Only Source for Data About US Federal Government Contractors

Check out some of these sites. Not all of them list data specific to individual vendors, but the links are still useful and relevant to the topic of this article:

  • USASpending.gov is a site established pursuant to the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. You can search for specific government contractors by typing their name into the “SEARCH FOR A RECIPIENT” box.
  • Data.gov is the US federal government’s data catalog, with information regarding just about any topic. The referenced link is to a search by keyword “contractor”. You’ll may come across some datasets that include specific government contractors, but its main benefit is the dozens of aggregate data sets.
  • The Schedule Sales Query (SSQ) provides access to sales and other data provided to the General Services Administration (GSA) by government contractors on the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS). Follow the links to the Schedules e-Library and you can view the services offered by vendors through their listings on the FSS.

Happy hunting and be sure to check out some of the other Resources available at AJGK5.