Notarize Your Fed Contract Boss: GSA's Fraud-Fighting Fix
Published Date: 1/27/2025
Notice
Summary
The government is updating how new company leaders sign up in the System for Award Management (SAM) to stop fraud and make things smoother. Now, only new leaders replacing old ones need to send notarized papers, not every new company. This change helps keep the system safe without extra hassle and invites public feedback by February 26, 2025.
Analyzed Economic Effects
5 provisions identified: 1 benefits, 3 costs, 1 mixed.
Notarized Letter Requirement Narrowed
GSA will limit the notarized Entity Administrator Appointment Letter (EAAL) requirement so it is used only to establish an Entity Administrator for an existing SAM.gov entity when the previous administrator is no longer on staff, instead of collecting it for all new entities. This refines the prior “collect for all new entities” approach and is intended to reduce unnecessary notarization steps for many registrants.
Small Entities May Face External Notary Costs
GSA estimates about 31,500 small entities per year will need external notary services; those entities are estimated to require about 1 hour for signature/notarization and face a nominal third-party notary fee of $5.00, with a projected signing officer hourly rate of about $100.
Time to Create and Upload EAAL
An individual seeking Entity Administrator access is provided a template and is estimated to take 0.5 hours to create the notarized letter and 0.25 hours to upload it to the Federal Service Desk; GSA used an hourly rate of $25.06 for the government staff equivalent in its burden calculations. These time estimates apply when an individual must submit the notarized document.
Large Entities Use In‑House Notarization
GSA estimates about 58,500 of the 90,000 annual entities without an Entity Administrator will have in-house notaries; those entities are projected to spend about 0.5 hours of an executive/officer’s time to sign and notarize internally, using an average projected hourly rate of about $150.
Annual Burden and Response Estimates Published
GSA reports annual reporting burden estimates of 139,027 respondents, 1 response per respondent, 139,027 total annual responses, 0.5 hours per response, and 69,513 total annual burden hours for this information collection (OMB Control No. 3090-0317).
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Key Dates
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