4.1601  Policy.

(a) Procurement Instrument Identifier (PIID). Agencies shall have in place a process that ensures that each PIID used to identify a solicitation or contract action is unique Governmentwide, and will remain so for at least 20 years from the date of contract award.

(b) Agencies must submit their proposed identifier format to the General Services Administration's Integrated Acquisition Environment Program Office, which maintains a registry of the agency-unique identifier schemes.

(c) The PIID shall consist of alpha characters in the first positions to indicate the agency, followed by alpha-numeric characters according to agency procedures.

(d) The PIID shall be used to identify all solicitation and contract actions. The PIID shall also be used to identify solicitation and contract actions in designated support and reporting systems (e.g., Federal Procurement Data System, Past Performance Information Retrieval System), in accordance with regulations, applicable authorities, and agency policies and procedures.

(e) Agencies shall not change the PIID, unless the conditions in paragraph (f) of this section exist.

(f) If continued use of a PIID is not possible or is not in the Government's best interest solely for administrative reasons (e.g., for implementations of new agency contracting systems), the contracting officer may assign a new PIID by issuing a modification. The modification shall clearly identify both the original and the newly assigned PIID.