SAM.GOV and Entity Administrator Policy Changes
A Change in GSA’s Third Party Policy Will Affect Some Roles in SAM.gov
By: Kenneth Goldman (GSA)
The General Services Administration (GSA) issued the following announcement on March 6, 2023:
Effective today, Entity Administrator roles can only be held by employees, officers, or board members of an entity. To enhance security, this change to the Entity Administrator role ensures the entity is in control of and accountable for who can update its registration in SAM.gov, while allowing entities to continue to use service providers to manage their entity registration, if they wish.
If you use an outside service to manage your registration, or if you provide registration management services to other organizations, this change to SAM.gov roles impacts you. The outside service and the entity may need to take action to ensure entities can manage access to their entities.
Now, when you register an entity or update an entity registration, you must identify your relationship to the entity. If you are not an employee, officer, or board member of the entity, you will no longer be able to hold the Entity Administrator role. Instead, you will be given the Data Entry role. With that role, you can continue to register new entities, manage updates, and renew entity registrations, but you can't manage user roles.
Entities assigning Entity Administrator roles using an Entity Administrator Appointment Letter, (sometimes known as the notarized letter process) will no longer be able to assign the Entity Administrator role to a non-employee.
My entity currently uses outside Entity Administrator support to manage our SAM.gov registration. What are the next steps?
You need to establish an employee, officer, or board member as an Entity Administrator if you don’t have one already. There are two ways to do this.
- Send an Entity Administrator Appointment Letter to the Federal Service Desk (FSD) appointing an administrator, or
- Ask your outside Entity Administrator to assign the role to someone in your entity before your next registration update.
Once you have an Entity Administrator from your organization, they should assign at least one additional administrator as a backup.
I manage registrations for other organizations. What should I do?
First, rest assured that you can continue to create and manage registrations on behalf of entities with the Data Entry role.
Before you complete the next registration update for your clients, help them out by requesting who they would like to serve as the Entity Administrator role. View the steps to assign a role in SAM.gov here. This will save your client the task of having to submit a letter to appoint someone.
When you begin or renew an entity’s registration, you’ll be asked whether you are an entity employee, officer, or board member. When you select that you are not, you’ll be asked for the start and end dates of your contract with the entity and for the email address of a point of contact at the entity, so have those things handy before you start.
Read more about what you can do with a Data Entry role here. There are only two things you won’t be able to do with the Data Entry role: assign roles to others and deactivate the entity’s registration.
My entity has an employee, officer or board member currently serving as an Entity Administrator. What are the next steps?
Entities that already have an employee, officer or board member as the Entity Administrator managing their SAM.gov registration are not affected by this change. Remember, it is 100% free to useSAM.gov. You do not need to pay a fee to register your entity or to keep your entity registration active. SAM.gov does not endorse any registration management services.
To view your current roles, sign in to SAM.gov and go to your Workspace. Locate your Profile and then select “My Roles.” Roles are assigned by entity for each SAM.gov domain. Read this guide for more about SAM.gov roles and permissions. If you have any troubles making the change, reach out to FSD.gov.
We strongly encourage all entities to have at least one backup employee Entity Administrator assigned in case of staff changes or absences.
For additional support relating to your SAM.gov registration, please contact your regional PTAC counselor with any questions you may have about this recent GSA policy change and how it may impact your business.
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