Federal contracting · answer
What is an exclusion in federal contracting?
An exclusion is an official action — suspension, debarment, or a statutory or regulatory bar — that makes a person or company ineligible to receive new federal contracts, grants, or other assistance. Active exclusions are published on SAM.gov.
The facts
An exclusion is an official government action that renders a person or company ineligible to receive new federal contracts, grants, or other assistance. It is the umbrella term covering suspensions, debarments, and bars imposed directly by statute or regulation.
Exclusions are entered by suspension and debarment officials across federal agencies and consolidated into a single government-wide record: the SAM.gov exclusions list. Each record carries the excluded party's identifiers, the exclusion type, the agency, and the active window — the activation date and, where applicable, the termination date.
That active window is the fact Fonteum's government silo is built around. An award signed inside a recipient's active exclusion window is reported strictly as two dated facts — the award's signed date and the exclusion's active window — with no score and no accusation, and always with a link to confirm current status at the source. An exclusion is an eligibility status, not a verdict, and it can be lifted or expire; the record states what was true on a given date, and SAM.gov remains the live system of record.
Source: SAM.gov exclusions list (U.S. General Services Administration), the federal system of record. Confirm current status at SAM.gov →
Statutory basis
Defines exclusion and the actions (suspension, debarment, statutory/regulatory ineligibility) that make a party ineligible for federal awards.
Go to the source
- SAM.gov exclusions list →official source
- The Leakage Report →
Related questions
Where are federal exclusions published?
On the SAM.gov exclusions list, the consolidated government-wide record. Suspension and debarment officials across agencies enter exclusions there, and contracting officers are directed to check it before award.
Does an exclusion mean a company broke the law?
Not by itself. Some exclusions follow misconduct findings; others are statutory or precautionary. An exclusion is an eligibility status, and Fonteum reports it as a dated fact tied to SAM.gov — never as a determination of wrongdoing.